The Noro Cooperative

[cmdp123789]

But the grass? ..    yo know.. the filler grass.. 

[compdude787]

Looking at it a bit more, I do agree with a lot of Art128's suggestions, especially about all the tall buildings nearby, the small size of the terminal and the presence of buildings and fuel tanks too close to the taxiways. (yes, you don't want A380s clipping the sides of buildings! ) You really don't have tall buildings so close to an airport IRL. I know you want to have hotels, which is fine, but you could make them a bit more sprawling.

Another thing I should mention is that it's not a good idea to have trees so close to runways and taxiways. Trees attract birds, and having a whole flock of birds so close to jet engines means bad things will happen to the planes. Try and keep trees away from any runways and taxiways. You may even want to load up those retaining wall lots in LE, and make versions of them sans trees.

Also, airports should have a lot more parking. There's going to be a lot of Norowegians who might decide to take a vacation to other parts of the SimWorld and will need to drive to the airport, and that seems to be the only way people can get to the airport at present due to lack of a mass transit or rail line. Also, besides having a bunch of parking, many airports have another parking garage located a bit further away from the terminal that serves as a rental-car parking garage. People coming from all over the SimWorld to Noroway's airport will need a car to be able to drive on all of Noropolis' awesome freeways, (yes, I'm sure that Noropolis is the roadgeek's paradise for Sims) so you need to provide a place for companies to rent out cars to people. This will need to be connected to the terminal with a shuttle bus service or a people-mover system.

Also, I know you have distribution centers and warehouses for freight, but where's the airport's freight terminal? Cargo planes need somewhere to be unloaded, and this is often separate from the main terminal itself.

Hope this advice helps you; to be honest, I haven't ever built an airport in SC4 either, but I do have a bit of an interest in aviation, so I know some stuff about airport layouts and whatnot.

[carlfatal]

Ouch - I think, this is my first comment here. I had to look the whole thread first, and luckily I am ready to comment, when you, Maarten, show some new pictures of the progress.

First thing is, that I am impressed alone by the idea of a multyplayer of this kind. And what you do with it is still outstanding! 
If you need a real rail geek in your team...  nah, just a joke, but I would love to build railyards with the new textures - if possible. And most of you may have their hands on them... 

The last update: I especially like the developing of the residential area in the last picture. That is a piece of art, isnt it? 

I must admit, I have no clue about airports but... I live in Frankfurt, and the airport here has a nearby quarter with a lot of higher buildings. Away from that I never tried using any of the airport puzzle pieces. When I first downloaded some of them I thought, it would be some kind of science to dive in and learn, how this works. 

[MandelSoft]

But the grass? ..    yo know.. the filler grass.. 

The filler grass is the standard one from the RMIP. However, the Sudden Valley Terrain mod also changes the grass textures on lots, hence why they  look different.

[noahclem]

<snip>

You can still see I'm a novice at building airports. Let me remind you that this is the last airport I built before this one. The realisim of this airport has improved quite a bit and I had a critical Noah watching over my shoulder. Still, I know things can be better.

I wouldn't say I was watching over your shoulder although I did argue with you about making the runways longer a few times. You came to me with an already finished airport and I never had a chance to be part of the planning process which I'd really been looking forward to doing. I'd actually done quite a bit of that process already, doing a lot of studying on the various components of airports, how they work, how they have been done in RL, and how it could be possible to implement them in SC4. I have pages and pages of notes and plans but was apparently wasting my time.

The area around the airport, other than where it directly interacts with the airport looks good and in my experience it's not uncommon to see relatively tall buildings in the vicinity of an airport though obviously not near flight paths. The interchange to the airport is excellent, as I've already mentioned. I also quite like the little town, other than the double roundabout. The road tunnel doesn't seem necessary given the low density of the area, the proximity to the end of the runway and the high expense of such a tunnel. If were to build a tunnel I'd highly recommend skipping that kind of retaining walls and just gradually sloping the area around the tunnel approach, probably with a little MMP decor.

I'm going to try to post something this evening--I couldn't believe it the other day when I added it all up and realized I have more than 50km of highways I haven't yet shared   I've spent a lot of time trying to get shorelines to look right and think I may have made a breakthrough last night, being inspired by rediscovering the Poseidon mod.

[compdude787]

I'm going to try to post something this evening--I couldn't believe it the other day when I added it all up and realized I have more than 50km of highways I haven't yet shared   I've spent a lot of time trying to get shorelines to look right and think I may have made a breakthrough last night, being inspired by rediscovering the Poseidon mod.

Yes, I'd love to see more highways as well as your creative interchanges! Looking forward to seeing them! Fifty kilometers of freeway is a lot to be hiding from us... And I'm really curious to see what you've done with the Poseidon mod.

EDIT: I know that it may be not that big of a deal to have tall buildings so close to airports IRL, but they really don't fit here, especially because you have farms surrounding the whole airport. I also don't really like the choice of industrial buildings. You need more high-tech industry here or commercial office parks, because you'll be less likely to have factories here (aside from airplane assembly plants) and more likely to have business headquarters for companies like airlines, and other aerospace companies.

You could have a few hotels next to a convention center, but I don't know. The airport seems to be so far out of the city that it may just be a better idea to put in a rapid-transit or passenger rail line into the CBD and have a convention center there. I do think it wouldn't hurt to have your suburbs extend out to the airport, especially since a large airport would employ lots of people, including pilots, flight attendants, ground crew, terminal workers and security personnel, and other aviation-related employees.

[noahclem]

Yes, I'd love to see more highways as well as your creative interchanges! Looking forward to seeing them! Fifty kilometers of freeway is a lot to be hiding from us...

Thanks and this should knock about 5km off the total

The current state of tile Oy:
click for full 3072x888

The working plan is for forests in the hills and farms along the valley area, a larger town with a motorway exit on the southeast coast, a small village on the northwest shore, and a small amount of light residential in the northeast flowing over from the port in neighboring Qx.


Closeup near the center of the interchange:

Note simultaneous brown canal water and blue pond water courtesy of Poseidon (though to be fair Jeroni had created something very similar in the past)


Example shoreline showing Poseidon effects allowing multiple beach textures. The gray above the water surface is Gobias' Vancouver beach mod while gray below the surface is a version of that mod I mixed with Poseidon water textures to blend better with beach-less shorelines and look better in shallow water. The yellow sand is an effect from Poseidon, generated by a few one tile transparent lots, overlying the regular beach texture.



This area, where the creek draining the area north of the interchange transitions to sea level water, best shows the present state of the terrain/shore mods



The same without grid lines



Same area in zoom 6 but with the terrain on the right bank slightly tweaked to force beach textures to show on the right

The biggest challenge I've had with shorelines is getting diagonal shorelines to look good without having water transparent to 30m/100' or more and not suiting shallow water streams and the like well. Diagonals tend to look very jagged, often with bits of white from beach or blue from water protruding into land textures repeatedly. Here I've tried a darker beach mod that will blend with land textures, even in those annoying situations where beach textures are triggered on a tile with a steep slope. Instead of choosing between a beach or a water texture for the seafloor textures I've blended the two, though they're closer to the original beach textures. I still have a lot to learn in this area but I'm getting much closer to where I want to be.


Same area MMPed temporarily as an example. The irregular terrain makes flat-planed-MMP water very difficult. I plan on a lot-based implementation here, incorporating waterfall/rapid spray effects and either lot textures or an effect for the water itself.



Example of possible terrain effects in the same area. A scaled-down version of the water here could potentially be used instead of MMPs for "plop water". This kind of terrain-conforming texture effect would seem to have a lot of potential and I've been doing a little looking into modding them.



Cheers

[eggman121]

That is so cool Noah  . I love that interchange  Also that water  . That would be so good for making dams for a water supply. I'm interested to see where you go with it. Keep up the good work!

-eggman121

Thanks Stephen! Interesting idea for dams. I'd used the other Poseidon technique for that but it has enough disadvantages that this might be better. Noro does have a dam and it could use some revisiting....

-Noah

[vortext]

Nice work Noah! 

Example of possible terrain effects in the same area. A scaled-down version of the water here could potentially be used instead of MMPs for "plop water". This kind of terrain-conforming texture effect would seem to have a lot of potential and I've been doing a little looking into modding them.

Yes, those terrain effects are very useful, I changed all of the textures to suit my own environments. For example the various dirts and grasses in this picture are terrain paint lots with textures from Gobias SV terrain applied. You can make out the proper terrain texture in the upper right and lower left hand corners. Some things to keep in mind: the size differs randomly within certain boundaries with each plop and the orientation is random, too, so any kind of regular pavement is out of the question, sadly. I've not yet found a way to re-scale them as these are effects so there's no S3D or anything to work with. And as you probably noticed the terrain paint covers everything: networks, lots and ground mmps. The latter can solved by raising the models, though they have to be raised quite a bit to resurface.

At any rate, really great to see what's been going on in Noro behind the scenes!

Thanks Erik and excellent picture! Interesting information about the effects. I thought it looked like they might be able to be re-scaled, maybe by changing those round FSHs with the blurred edges but it'll save me some time not trying to do that. Were the paint lots you made with SV textures additional or did they replace effects with Xannepan's textures? This is certainly a fascinating area for exploration. And of course it's always good to hear from you here

-Noah

[MandelSoft]

I love the squirrel logo in the mosaic picture! Great work, Noah!

Thanks Maarten! Speaking of the squirrel you'll have to show off your creation related to that sometime soon

-Noah

[art128]

I agree with Maarten, the squirel logo is excellent.

Awesome highway work, Noah. Though I have to tell the truth, I don't really like highways.

Thanks Arthur! Do you mean all highways or just motorways?

-Noah

[vester]

Nice touch on the squirel seal.


Here is a transport logo:



Outstanding work, Arne!

-Noah

[noahclem]

Thought I'd give a little update. Progress has been incremental since the last post: narrowing the drainage canal, fine-tuning the interchange, and extending the highway to the region's border at the edge of the tile.





Narrowing the canal where it goes under the interchange let me smooth out the slopes and allowed me to shorten the ramps heading east a bit (though I was still one or two tiles short of being able to switch the north C2 ramp to F2). I made some adjustments to the south end of the interchange facilitating a 6C highway heading south instead of the prior 6S. I'd thought about getting rid of the overpass crossing the canal (it happens to lie right around the RL watershed) but it adds a bit of character to the highway I think. I'm also pondering running a rail line to the south and west of the highways to give a connection to the region border but am at the moment leaning against it. Here's where we are in the region, for reference:



and in real life


I'm thinking of raising the hills on the south edge of the tile to give more of the real life character as you can't really tell from the SC4 tile that the flat area ends sharply with high hills there.


I'm not sure what to do with the interchange in the south of the tile. Which of these ideas do you prefer?

A)



B)



C)


Or something else?

[art128]

I think I like idea A better. 
Nice work with the interchange and the canal. I never realized NORO used the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky region.

[compdude787]

I think it would be better for you to go with option A. I don't think it's a good idea to have more than one interchange between freeways in the same tile, unless it's the CBD. A folded diamond would be a better fit for that area anyway.

Also, how is it that Maarten uses the Ontario RHW textures in NORO as well as the single median barrier for -C networks, but you don't? I thought your plugins folder is the same for everyone, right down to the NAM installation. I'm just asking because the Ontario textures look a lot better than the default, and the single median barrier is much more realistic than two Jersey barriers, and there's actually a barrier even on FA stretches of the freeway. It looks a lot nicer!

[odrzutowiec]

Unless this is a super-important regional avenue I would go with A too.

[MandelSoft]

Also, how is it that Maarten uses the Ontario RHW textures in NORO as well as the single median barrier for -C networks, but you don't? I thought your plugins folder is the same for everyone, right down to the NAM installation.

Personal preferences. It's a purely cosmetic thing. I guess Noah hasn't installed the latest RHW version yet that does contain the option to switch between the single and double barrier option on the RHW-6C, which raises the question: do you really have the latest NAM installed, Noah?

As for the options for interchanges, unless this is a vital region connection that will expect very high flows in the turning direction to the south, I'd prefer option A. The alternatives just look expensive to build. Alternatively, you could make a compromise and build a trumpet interchange with the loop for the east-to-south direction.

Good that you show updates this way. I was holding the airport update back for too long and posted the end result too quickly. We all know how that went, so that's back to the drawing board...

Best,
Maarten

[compdude787]

Also, how is it that Maarten uses the Ontario RHW textures in NORO as well as the single median barrier for -C networks, but you don't? I thought your plugins folder is the same for everyone, right down to the NAM installation.

Personal preferences. It's a purely cosmetic thing. I guess Noah hasn't installed the latest RHW version yet that does contain the option to switch between the single and double barrier option on the RHW-6C, which raises the question: do you really have the latest NAM installed, Noah?

Huh, I thought the NORO plugins folder included a NAM installation that was common to everyone. I guess I can see how you'd cut that out of the synced plugin folder because the large size of the NAM.

[vester]

Would vote for option C. Sort of like the not out of the box solutions.

My favorite too   Looks like we'll be going with a different plan though

-Noah

[noahclem]

We used to have truly synced plugins where any changes to one person's automatically affected all the others but it ended up being too much of a hassle and after the third or forth time getting accidentally deleted we left that system. Now we have a shared plugins folder that we sync to manually but it's in need of an overhaul that I've not gotten around to since we restarted. At the moment we effectively have the shared plugins, a folder "to add from Maarten", a folder "to add from Noah", separate NAMs (though there shouldn't be any practical differences), and some other cosmetic differences. Hopefully I'll have time to get things into better shape there shortly (I've at least fixed my C-medians).

"A" was my original choice, as you can probably guess since I've built the approach to it, but a number of factors made me reconsider that:
-In that alignment the highway would cross the border orthogonally and immediately run into a steep hillside (see Google map)
-"A" doesn't follow the slope of the hill very well, requiring a deep cut into the hillside and the highway leaving the hill at a high elevation while "B" and "C" would allow the road to follow the contour of the land fairly naturally.

If we go with a route that follows the contours of that hill I don't want a diamond as traffic will only go one way (downhill) from it and I think the slope of the hill would prohibit a trumpet. I guess a fourth option could be lengthening the diagonal stretch before the highway goes to FA and really starts climbing and thereby avoid most of the elevation-related headaches. I was kind of in a hurry to go to FA as the super-wide area taken up by diag 6C bothers me on slopes sometimes.

As for how major of an interchange it would be I'm not really sure. In some sense it would be nice to have it high traffic as I want to transition to RHW-4 and the 4-6 transition makes more sense if there's lots of traffic getting on there. Probably though it will just serve a small-ish town and local farms etc. My working idea is to build up the hills in the southeast I mentioned earlier (thoughts on that?) and make a town where the hills, valley, and coast meet and have the interchange serve that. Alternately would could make a town more like a square km in that location, spanning the width of the valley.