Friday, May 26, 2006
Cool City Thing
I have to admit I don't exactly understand what the point of the link above is, but I know it looks pretty cool, especially the video (until the end when all the cars start spiraling on the screen for no apparent reason.) As near as I understand this, this is a program that takes a bit of land and produces organic and organized urban growth and planning using mathmatical calculations. In their example, it's using wierd circular roads, but the way it's rendered is pretty cool. I hope that future versions of Simcity look this great. I'm tired of roads that can only run due east-west or due north-south.
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2 comments:
They already have these sorts of roads, known politely as cul-de-sacs and impolitely as dead-ends.
Look at any of the countless tract housing developments around the world and they agree with you about stright lines being dull and boring. However, until every police, fire and medical response vehicle is equipped with a GPS system, these curved roads cause a lot of problems. When all houses look alike and half the streets lead to nowhere, it slows the response time in emergency situations.
When I loved in "Green River," giving directions for people who wanted to visit was a chore. Due to the winding nature of the roads, guests couldn't read the street signs until it was too late, if they could spot them at all. I had quite a few friends knock on the wrong person's front door in those days.
Nah, you miss the point. It's not so much about the roads themselves that amazed me, it was the way in which the system could design on its own. In this particular example, it was all the doily-like annoying circles, but the style of the animation and the way in which it worked with and shaped the geography was pretty cool and would look really slick in a future version of SimCity.
Wait until you come to visit us. You'll call from 39th. Ave. and I'll look out my back window through the neighbor's side yard to their street and tell you what kind of car you're driving and you'll be sitting there going there is no frigging NNNNN on this street and I'll be all "Yeah, you're on 39th. Ave. and you want 39th. Place." Come over one street.
Of course, in real life to use this technology for more organic and intelligent road planning, it also relies and creativity and intelligence in street naming as well so you don't have every single street numbered. It's supposed to make sense but I think it's just dumb. Especially when there's a 45 degree angle cut to the next county and they have their own numbering system, as near as I can tell.
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