Modified traffic behavior using TM:PE mod to reflect Sri Lankan driving habits:<p>- Buses may ignore lane arrows<p>- Vehicles may enter blocked junctions<p>- Vehicles may do U-turns at junctions<p>- 10% of drivers are reckless<p>- Vehicles may park on the sides of streets<p>- Three wheelers and scooters<p>Brilliant!
I've attempted something similar for a city of 20,000 before using an overlay mod but map projection issues between the DEM and images along with city simulation scaling just yielded a stretched blob with 95% industrial traffic and a queue entering the city that never ended. I will check their tuning parameters and see how they handled it. It was fun to build regardless.<p>I've been waiting to try with CS:2 using aerial photo and lidar data of Vancouver that I've collected myself. Mod support is still weak compared to CS:1 but I'm hopeful that it's possible. I'd like to release a DEM, DEM+roads, and then the fully built version as three separate maps.
I recently started a company called Good Places, actually Gode Steder in Norwegian, where we simply design good places. Our goal is to design city districts with better quality of live and status than urban sprawl. You can't force people to live in cities, but you can make urban districts that are for better suited for families than urban sprawl with single family homes. The aesthetic qualities is just as important as the quality of the rest of the city planning. If that means making buildings inspired by 150 years old buildings, then so be it.
Wow this must have taken quite awhile. I've always wanted to do something similar with my hometown (for the giggles) and now I have a guide on how to start.<p>Have urban planners been receptive to using this model for how they work on issues that affect the city?
> So we have a few notable issues:
3.Perfect adherence to schedules in public transport, unlike real-world variation<p>I love this quote from readme.md
I remember doing this in SimCity 4 a few years ago for a real small town of ~7000 and it actually worked remarkably well out of the box. Residential/Commercial/Industrial came out fairly balanced. The only thing I had to mod to make it really work were the catchment areas for schools etc, which are very small by default. I found a mod that made them 2-3 times bigger radius (but actual capacity stayed the same, and worked well enough).<p>There's something especially fun and interesting about replicating real places you know in games. That's something I don't think the people who freaked out about kids making their house or school in Doom or Quake ever really understood.
A crude 'digital twin` with detailed land use and zoning based on official city development plans and data centered around 2020; over a million virtual citizens, simulating population dynamics that reflect large-scale, real-world demographics and human movement; public transport based on actual route data.
I visited Sri Lanka a few years ago, and mostly loved it (there were some annoying bits, of course, but definitely one of the best trips I've had).<p>Since then, Colombo is one of my favourite cities as a reference. It has such weird urban planning (or lack thereof), I often find myself comparing other cities to it. It would be awesome to be able to revisit it, and recheck my reference points, virtually in a game.
This actually sounds like a great idea, I've often wondered with some of the advanced city simulators like this if this might be possible. Seems like a good use of AI if it had access to all those data sets local government GIS folks use (hopefully) to align this sort of data to make these virtual representations.<p>Problem I think would be most folks that might even do this as a hobby probably don't have that access to GIS and other data (cheaply) like they did here, and government workers are government workers, so nothing interesting will usually ever happen there. Certainly not in the US with any government entity I've worked with here at least
> <i>The project is conducted in partnership with the Strengthening Social Cohesion and Peace in Sri Lanka (SCOPE) programme, co-funded by the European Union and German Federal Foreign Office. SCOPE is implemented by GIZ in partnership with the Ministry of Justice, Prisons Affairs and Constitutional Reforms.</i><p>Is this specific project really funded by tax-payers money?<p>> <i>Curated thousands of 3D assets to replace default buildings</i><p>How does this help to achieve any of these below ?<p>> Potential applications include:<p>> Simulating changes in roads, transport routes<p>> Exploring effects of changes in private transport
policies<p>> Visualizing impact of new infrastructure like monorails or wider pavements<p>> Assessing effects of introducing more green spaces or parking areas
"Cost-effectiveness: $19.99 for a perpetual license vs. $6,000-$8,600 for professional software like CUBE"<p>I hope their efforts have carry over to other localities wanting to do something like this. They're a good example for others.
I was hoping there'd be some report on what they'd learned about the city as a result of modeling it and, presumably, testing some changes. But don't get me wrong, this is awesome anyway.
Awesome effort, always wanted to see our colombo on a game! It's really extensive and seems to be made towards public policy, Thanks Yudanjaya and Nimesha!
I was surprised that near Sri Lanka there is a large area of sea landfill. As I explored the Google Map I felt it has a "taste" of Chinese companies and so it is: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_City_Colombo" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_City_Colombo</a>
I remember learning long time ago that the people who made cities skylines also made actual city simulation software. Or the game was a derivative of a simulation software. Something along those lines. There were screenshots of the tool. I can't find it anymore.
curious why colombo? cities skylines doesn't exactly have tuktuks as a transportation option (though it really should...)<p>Plus you don't need a city simulation to see that the city desperately needs a good metro.
Is using games for real-life city planning a viable option to later apply in real life? I.e. if my city wanted to try out a new metro line, is replicating the city in Cities: Skylines good enough to simulate what would happen?<p>Related (Kerbal Space Program): <a href="https://xkcd.com/1356/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1356/</a>
Looks really interesting, but I'm not buying a license and setting it up just to have a look. Is there a video available ? Hindsights from the creator on possible real world application ?
Do city planners and leaders have comparable commercial simulations? If not, I’m always surprised why they don’t use games like City Skylines especially cities much smaller than Columbo.
once upon a time, players would show their real-world cities in Simcity. Oh, how the mighty have fallen !<p>Turns out there was a lot of strategizing behind this overtake, and its an interesting read [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://www.polygon.com/features/2015/4/8/8340665/cities-skylines-simcity" rel="nofollow">https://www.polygon.com/features/2015/4/8/8340665/cities-sky...</a>
Neat, now combine this with Project Sid for a full simulation... <a href="https://altera.al/" rel="nofollow">https://altera.al/</a>
> <i>Our goal was to create a more accessible and visual tool for citizens to comprehend urban problems and judge the impact of different decisions.</i><p>Building atop an old closed source video game isn't as accessible as would be ideal.<p>What are some open source and open standard starting points for this (other than OpenStreetMap), and how close do they get you?<p>(I once built something atop Google Earth, which made sense at the time, but I would've loved to be able to do it atop Web browser features we have today, and open source.)