[HN Gopher] We built the city of Colombo in Cities:Skylines
___________________________________________________________________
We built the city of Colombo in Cities:Skylines
Author : icaruswept
Score : 472 points
Date : 2024-09-01 15:05 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| icaruswept wrote:
| 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.
| greenavocado wrote:
| At some point I would expect you to write your own simulation
| engine given the serious limitations you ran into
| dwattttt wrote:
| How bad those limitations are depends on the purpose of the
| simulation, they satisfy a few uses cases even with those
| limits. Also the skill sets involved in those two tasks are
| quite different.
| tedivm wrote:
| I've had some maintenance issues with my car, guess I should
| just design and manufacture my own.
| icaruswept wrote:
| I think at some point I will, but this is a task that takes
| multiple overlapping fields of expertise - from simulations to
| 3D rendering. I'll teach myself over time. I build little
| procedural generation experiments for fun that make their way
| into my books. But this is one of those dreams that will take
| me a couple of years to get to the level where I'm competent
| enough to go for it.
| greenavocado wrote:
| Is it necessary to work in 3D initially? You can make the
| problem a lot easier when working in 2D.
| icaruswept wrote:
| Goal here was to build a visualization and communication
| tool; 3D is an essential component of that. For 2D, land
| use maps already exist.
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| 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.
|
| Have urban planners been receptive to using this model for how
| they work on issues that affect the city?
| ekianjo wrote:
| is there any work done to show that Cities Skyline can
| approximate real problems and is not just a fancy game?
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| I'm asking based off of what they wrote in the readme
|
| "While not a completely accurate simulation, this "toy
| universe model" provides a useful tool for visualizing and
| communicating urban development concepts. We present this
| tool in the hope that it will facilitate better communication
| and understanding of urban planning issues in Colombo."
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Not completely accurate sounds like a bold claim of
| accuracy imo
| mrWiz wrote:
| Does the following description of it as a "toy universe
| model" affect how you judge the claims of accuracy?
| jncfhnb wrote:
| That is a separate claim
| blooalien wrote:
| Even if it _is_ "just a fancy game", things like this can be
| _very_ educational for upcoming generations of _real_ city
| planner types. Get kids interested in those "real problems"
| in healthy ways _early_ in life, and give them tools / toys
| to explore their ideas with. :)
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| the question is, are the precepts baked into the equations
| around traffic flow, urban design, etc, truly a reflection
| of reality. In SC3K, my low density residential housing was
| never as happy as high density, is that based on reality?
| My enactment of endless (in sc3k, check all boxes) series
| of ordinances produced the best result. Was the
| neighborhood around the casino really crime ridden or was
| that a trope?
|
| Are the models based on real life or are we using a game to
| pretend real life - like making a game about the wonders of
| say, collectivization, rather than maybe creating a
| simulator for how market trade reaallly works.
| icaruswept wrote:
| Methodology here: https://github.com/team-
| watchdog/colombo-skylines/wiki/Intro...
|
| We've also tweaked many of the assumptions (traffic flow,
| citizen lifecycles etc) https://github.com/team-
| watchdog/colombo-skylines/wiki/mod-c... to get "somewhere
| in the vicinity" of how people actually behave - nursery
| school at 6 years old, high school after, then a job,
| maybe college, then employment and retirement at 65.
|
| In some of the work that I was involved in years back we
| were using CDR (call detail records) to estimate human
| mobility. See: https://medium.com/@yudhanjaya/how-people-
| come-to-nallur-7d3...
|
| We're certainly not that accurate, as the broader you go
| with simulation, the less deep you can get to. But as a
| teaching tool to help people think about the
| instersection of complex systems, it's decent.
|
| If I had more time I'd spent it making a new asset pack
| so those houses look more Sri Lankan.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I wouldn't make any serious policy decisions based on
| City Skylines, it's a resource management game not a
| serious simulation if that's what you're asking.
| jaza wrote:
| In the case of Australia (my home), the casino itself is
| crime ridden (mainly the corporation behind the casino,
| and its behind-closed-doors relationships with organised
| crime and with government - but money laundering and
| other crimes also occur on the casino floor), while the
| neighbourhood around the casino is quite safe, peaceful,
| and upmarket.
| nxobject wrote:
| What's the standard of proof for a commercially available
| package other than "these are the municipalities/planning
| authorities that have used this before?"
| icaruswept wrote:
| Typically you look for its use in both academia and in the
| field (hence CUBE, for instance; widely used by the
| academics at Moratuwa who then go on to work on actual
| projects)
| rplnt wrote:
| Cities Skylines in the vanilla mode (and most, if not all,
| city builder games before it) famously ignores problems of
| car storage. It may actually seem like cars are somewhat
| sustainable.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Is there a mod out there that adds car storage? I can
| imagine the cities look less idealised when half the space
| is taken up by car parking lots lol.
| Delk wrote:
| TM:PE (Traffic Manager: President Edition) has a setting
| for more realistic parking:
| https://doc.tmpe.me/gameplay.html#parking-ai
|
| I don't know if it strictly mandates having physical
| space persistently for every car that exists in the city,
| or whether cars still somehow spawn and despawn
| dynamically under some circumstances.
|
| Edit: Looks like the car despawns if an attempt to find a
| parking space close enough to destination fails ten
| times.
| icaruswept wrote:
| They've been surprisingly receptive. We've taken care to point
| out that the map is not the territory, but we've had
| conversations with urban planners and professors (especially
| the Town and Country planning department at the University of
| Moratuwa): they're very interested in using this as a teaching
| tool for students. I recently did a presentation to 150
| students + urban designers and transport specialists, and they
| were super interested in a) trying this on smaller pieces at
| greater fidelity b) simulating other cities as well (like
| Kandy) and smaller towns where there is more planning leeway c)
| using this to illustrate effects of plans like COMTRANS (https:
| //www.transport.gov.lk/web/images/downloads/F-CoMTrans...)
| which is why we built the thing in the first place.
| neilv wrote:
| > _Our goal was to create a more accessible and visual tool for
| citizens to comprehend urban problems and judge the impact of
| different decisions._
|
| Building atop an old closed source video game isn't as accessible
| as would be ideal.
|
| What are some open source and open standard starting points for
| this (other than OpenStreetMap), and how close do they get you?
|
| (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.)
| icaruswept wrote:
| Not even remotely close. If you have millions of dollars and
| lots of talented programmers, I can build an engine from
| scratch. We do not live in an ideal world - public policy is
| about the art of the possible, and $19.99 (cost of Skylines in
| Sri Lanka) is a massive improvement from the $8000 a year fee
| for CUBE or OpenPaths. I do want to build a sim someday, but I
| estimate the learning of it will take me a few years to
| complete. Right now I'm at the stage of writing basic galaxy
| generator toys like https://github.com/yudhanjaya/GalaxyGen
| kfarr wrote:
| This is super impressive! I'd agree the open-source tooling
| isn't there yet, but it's coming in a few places. I started a
| 3D street visualizer but it's only at the scope of a few
| blocks at a time, not as large as a city area although we'd
| like to get there someday:
| https://github.com/3dstreet/3dstreet/
|
| There's also https://github.com/a-b-street/abstreet for
| larger area simulation but with less visual fidelity
| icaruswept wrote:
| Very cool, great to see progress in this!
| abhayhegde wrote:
| This is crazy! What if one day the citizens in the game can be
| mapped to real ones also?!
| icaruswept wrote:
| I'm reminded of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, and the child genius
| Thomasina . . . "If you could stop every atom in its position
| and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the
| actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really good at
| algebra . . ."
| lagadu wrote:
| You would make Heisenberg roll in his grave!
| icaruswept wrote:
| Every tornado-generating butterfly would be out of a job,
| for sure
| bastard_op wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Oddly enough, this is how our own universe simulation got
| started
| icaruswept wrote:
| Realistically I don't think the UDA (Urban Development
| Authority) will use this, BUT we have had calls with them where
| they asked to see a demo and seemed massively excited at the
| prospect of being able to visualize changes in the character of
| the city (in fact they wanted to know if we could build
| municipal buildings if they gave us the maps). University
| students who eventually become GIS folks seem more like the
| audience that will actually end up running and tweaking this.
| bastard_op wrote:
| I had a similar notion, as I prior worked with a large
| southern California municipality that was into "smart city"
| things as a solutions architect, and they would have loved
| for something like this for the same reasons you stated,
| particularly visual changes or features, adjusting
| pedestrian/bike/car traffic flows, points of interest, etc.
|
| I would love to know how large of a city would be possible to
| "import" and run with enough of a like data set. I would
| imagine it would give any GIS nerd a boner if they could do
| so themselves.
|
| Even remotely close I would consider a feat, so bravo to the
| team that did this!
| icaruswept wrote:
| Thanks! You may want to read the methodology - most of the
| imports broke and it ended up being a lot of manual work:
| https://github.com/team-watchdog/colombo-
| skylines/wiki/Intro...
|
| As for limits, when modded to the hilt, Skylines will give
| you:
|
| 298.6 sq km maximum area
|
| 1,048,576 maximum citizens
|
| 49,152 maximum individual buildings
|
| 65,636 maximum vehicles in motion
|
| 65,636 maximum parked vehicles
|
| 256 maximum transport lines (bus routes, train routes)
|
| That will no doubt change the nature of the city you can
| set up - you could do a large city very sparsely, or a
| smaller area in greater detail.
| a1o wrote:
| This looks super cool! Amazing project! I am really curious to
| try this idea at a smaller city. How much type and how many
| people took this endeavor?
| alephxyz wrote:
| You can download a height map file from https://terrain.party/
| or https://heightmap.skydark.pl/ and start a new game with the
| unlimited money cheat. Then it's just a matter of placing
| roads, utilities, public services and zoning the rest (that's
| the fun part).
| icaruswept wrote:
| Sadly, the height maps and the OSM road imports were quite
| borked, so I just ended up doing all the roads by hand with
| the maps on a second monitor. Some screenshots of the process
| here: https://github.com/team-watchdog/colombo-
| skylines/wiki/Intro...
| icaruswept wrote:
| So two people (myself and Nimesha) working for about four
| months straight, I think. Mostly eight to ten hour days. Three
| academics helping us find data for when public sources ran dry
| (especially flow along the corridors) - see the workflow at
| https://github.com/team-watchdog/colombo-skylines/wiki/Intro...
| hebocon wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Can you explain the projection issues you faced with the DEM? I
| thought something like gdal can reproject any data into a
| standard projection like web Mercator.
| hebocon wrote:
| If I recall correctly Cities Skylines needs a UTM-like
| projection but I think I made an error with the input data
| and got the X/Y scaling wrong. It was a fairly amateurish
| attempt and my knowledge of coordinate reference systems has
| improved quite a bit since then so I hope to fix that for the
| next attempt.
| icaruswept wrote:
| Good news is you can even overlay screenshots of Google
| Earth (which uses high-res data, some of it at 30 cm2 per
| pixel). Will take some fiddling with the coords, but it
| works!
| icaruswept wrote:
| Sadly, that happens. We use image overlay and exports off ESPG
| 4326 and tweaked the hell out of the coords until it worked.
| Even then there are still issues - which is why we're about
| 100m shorter than the real city. The overlays match perfectly,
| but in reality distances are always a few meters off across a
| large stretch. OSM imports broke completely, so I just ended up
| doing all the roads by hand with the maps on a second monitor.
| hebocon wrote:
| There's always a point where you look at the automated
| solution and think "Okay but... how long would it take to
| just to do manually?"
|
| I enjoyed your comprehensive write-up. I really like how you
| didn't get too lost in the details when the technical
| limitations cropped up and kept the focus on the
| interactivity and public awareness. Very fun project :)
| icaruswept wrote:
| Thanks!
| asmor wrote:
| C:S 1 has quite a few "thundering herd" issues, like perfectly
| cyclic deathwaves. This includes extreme industrial traffic if
| you zone it all in at once. The capacity of (all) buildings is
| also pretty extreme. Adding Realistic Population 2 and
| Lifecycle Rebalance Revisited brings it down to less gamey and
| more towards realistic, and you can tweak from there.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I should look into these mods, the death waves were annoying.
| I mean I get it, you build a big new residential area, people
| move in quickly and are all roughly the same age when they
| do, but they could've done something to fix it like randomize
| ages or have people move out of the city and replaced by a
| differently aged person.
| icaruswept wrote:
| Maybe this might help: the list of mods and what they do.
| You can pick what seems most useful for your game.
|
| https://github.com/team-watchdog/colombo-
| skylines/wiki/mod-c...
| icaruswept wrote:
| Yup, we've got a big list of mods to help alleviate some of
| these issues. Due to the way we've modeled the corridors and
| daily population flow in and out of the city, we still get
| roving herds of ambulances...
| karaterobot wrote:
| 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.
| icaruswept wrote:
| Coming up. I'm implementing some small bits of the COMTRANs
| plan, as it's politically relevant to our election cycle right
| now (https://www.transport.gov.lk/web/images/downloads/F-CoMTra
| ns...). It won't be a full implementation - we're a small team,
| and I want to encourage other people to come on board with
| their ideas. We do have a reasonable "how we did this" section
| if you're interested! https://github.com/team-watchdog/colombo-
| skylines/wiki/Intro...
| karaterobot wrote:
| Many, many years ago (2004?) I was on a NSF research project
| about participatory GIS, trying to help people (voters) make
| informed choices about transportation alternatives in a
| region--which road or rail improvements to make, and how to
| apportion funds between them. At the time, we _dreamed_ about
| being able to let people run a simulation of the consequences
| of their chosen package, but that was definitely not feasible
| with the technology we had at the time. That 's the
| background for why I'm so envious of what y'all pulled off!
| rc_kas wrote:
| Anyone have some screenshots? I'm not installing Cities Skylines
| just to view this. Sounds pretty awesome overall.
| spartanatreyu wrote:
| Did you try clicking the link?
| demarq wrote:
| Not sure if it's still there but on twitter they had a system
| where you'd have to click through before you're allowed to
| submit a comment.
|
| HN needs this!
| jocoda wrote:
| [Meta] so how do you report when the link is not working,
| or blocked for your geo?
| demarq wrote:
| I don't think they check or can check if you actually
| loaded the page. So I think they check only that the link
| was clicked
| vonmoltke wrote:
| > Not sure if it's still there but on twitter they had a
| system where you'd have to click through before you're
| allowed to submit a comment.
|
| The system did not prevent you from replying, it just added
| a warning message and a little friction to doing so.
| icaruswept wrote:
| The readme files in the repo have screenshots. Tried linking
| them here, but the URLs are massive, so let me link the docs -
|
| 1) Methodology: https://github.com/team-watchdog/colombo-
| skylines/wiki/Intro...
|
| 2) Main readme: https://github.com/team-watchdog/colombo-
| skylines
| zameermfm wrote:
| 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!
| icaruswept wrote:
| Cheers!
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Now you can grow it into Magnasanti (the 6 million inhabitants
| SimCity 3000 city)
| icaruswept wrote:
| Oddly enough I never played SimCity. Closest from those times
| for me were Ceasar III and Pharaoh (which I'm playing again
| now: there's a very good remake).
|
| Is this the Magnasanti you speak of?
| https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2013/designand...
|
| It looks fascinating.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Yes, that's the one
| Nition wrote:
| 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).
|
| 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.
| icaruswept wrote:
| For sure. I used to try making the layouts of our old cities
| (Anuradhapura etc) in games like Pharaoh and Ceasar 3.
|
| If you're into doom modding - have you seen myhouse.wad? Worth
| looking up on YouTube. Phenomenal achievement imo
| diggan wrote:
| > 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.
|
| We made maps of our school(s) to play in Counter Strike, I
| understand people freak out if they don't really understand
| what video games are. Especially when it was around the time
| when people were starting to freak out about if video games
| make people violent or not, because some school shooters in the
| US had some violent games they presumable played before their
| attack.
| ziofill wrote:
| I always found the argument that shooters played violent
| video games extremely weak. Of course they play video games,
| like most people their age.
| mikechalmers wrote:
| Same - I wanted to recreate my school for Counterstrike
| because I knew the building so well and if I played it with
| schoolmates we'd all know it like the back of our hands and
| associate different areas with different memories etc.
| leading to a more unique (and probably funny) experience. It
| had nothing to do with violence in reality.
| josefresco wrote:
| Unreal Tournament level editor was the easiest for a noob
| like me. We created our dorm rooms, campuses, our houses back
| home. That being said, this was 25 years ago (in the US), not
| _before_ school shootings but certainly not like they are
| today.
| highcountess wrote:
| Video games and guns themselves being the cause of shootings
| are just typical unhealthy excuse making in order to avoid
| having to actually address the real issues that would require
| consequences or accountability for and by people who very
| much do not want any consequences or accountability to affect
| them in any way, whether that is individuals or groups.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| I recall making a map of my high school in Duke Nukem 3D well
| before Columbine. I think the only reason was it was the
| closest floorplan I had readily available at the time and I had
| no Internet access. I was more interested in playing with the
| Build engine/map editor than actually shooting things.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| Modified traffic behavior using TM:PE mod to reflect Sri Lankan
| driving habits:
|
| - Buses may ignore lane arrows
|
| - Vehicles may enter blocked junctions
|
| - Vehicles may do U-turns at junctions
|
| - 10% of drivers are reckless
|
| - Vehicles may park on the sides of streets
|
| - Three wheelers and scooters
|
| Brilliant!
| icaruswept wrote:
| Haha, thanks!
| prmoustache wrote:
| Do you happen to observe same traffic jams in same area and
| time windows as in the real world?
|
| Also, do City Skyline drivers behaving like drivers who would
| use Waze (or could be configured so that a certain amount do)
| ?
| icaruswept wrote:
| We see broadly the same chokepoints (Galle Road, Baseline
| Road, the arteries feeding into Colombo). Modify these and
| the chokepoints distribute themselves. Small chokepoints
| don't always appear.
|
| Broadly, if you can do it by fiddling with this:
| https://doc.tmpe.me/vehicles.html, you can pull it off.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| my god. this makes cities skylines way more accurate with
| regard to south asian cities. still needs random elephants
| loaded up on trucks.
| Nifty3929 wrote:
| And cows that have the right-of-way.
| shagie wrote:
| https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/346/iii/
| 2...
|
| I am sure you can find similar laws in other states.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah but cows rarely roam free there :)
| icaruswept wrote:
| Cows don't roam free in Sri Lankan cities, either. You
| are aware that South Asia is a subcontinent and a whole
| set of islands, and not one singular city,right?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I have heard many Hindus consider the cow a holy animal
| and let them roam where they please. And there are many
| Hindus in Sri Lanka (though there are more buddhists who
| don't consider cows holy but are vegetarians).
|
| And yes I know the region pretty well. I've lived more
| than half my life outside my home country (in 3 different
| ones). Though never been to Sri Lanka no.
| shagie wrote:
| Digging through my photos... it was the '08 Great Road
| Trip... and I even took it on my iPhone then which means
| that I've got all the other metadata info.
|
| October 3rd, 2008 at 1:42 pm. The geocoding location on
| it puts it at https://www.google.com/maps/@48.3855579,-11
| 4.0865119,3a,75y,... though I'm not 100% sure that is the
| exact location. The photo is https://imgur.com/a/rzwSjak
| timvdalen wrote:
| > Notable issues:
|
| > Perfect adherence to schedules in public transport, unlike
| real-world variation
| teo_zero wrote:
| Is the limit for vehicles really 65636, or is this just a typo
| for 65536?
| xiconfjs wrote:
| That's what immediately caught my eye, too.
| input_sh wrote:
| It's a typo. Also, you need a mod to even reach that figure, by
| default the limits are substantially lower (16384 for moving
| vehicles, 2x that for parked vehicles).
| icaruswept wrote:
| Thanks for the spot, will double check. Yeah, we're modded to
| the hilt here. This is taking the game as far as the engine
| can handle.
| gbil wrote:
| Am I the only one that can't find "Conclusion and Future
| Applications" section ? I'm really interested in their plans here
| icaruswept wrote:
| You're right, we don't have one up yet. We did a few
| implementations of various government plans over the years (the
| Japan-funded COMTRANS being the most prominent) and I've
| invited a professional urban designer who works with the
| government to examine applications and limitations- so a more
| professional eval than just us saying "here's a thing!"
|
| Might write it all up as a paper if we have time.
| lackoftactics wrote:
| > So we have a few notable issues: 3.Perfect adherence to
| schedules in public transport, unlike real-world variation
|
| I love this quote from readme.md
| ehnto wrote:
| Same, although I am surprised because busses in cities skylines
| are usually still affected by car traffic issues. Trains would
| run perfectly though.
| icaruswept wrote:
| So because the number of active vehicles is much lower than
| reality, the road network is actually a lot more efficient:
| it's a nearly 1:1 scale city with less than a fifth of the
| real vehicles that would take up the streets. Mostly because
| of this, public transport in game is a lot better than our
| particular reality. In fact, the trains are completely
| underutilized - we can tweak transport modal share (and
| should) to get the numbers to balance better.
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| I suspect it's missing the traffic coming into the city
| from outside
| vladde wrote:
| 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?
|
| Related (Kerbal Space Program): https://xkcd.com/1356/
| xavxav wrote:
| Not really, conceptually it probably shares a lot of the same
| foundations that a useful simulator would have, but its
| important to keep in mind that they aren't actually simulators
| of cities in a realistic sense.
|
| Games such as cities, inherently embed a view of how the
| "right" city would be organized, providing tools and incentives
| to nudge you in that direction. Consider how all social
| problems can be solved by simply plopping down the relevant
| class of building nearby. Or simply the absence of parking
| lots!
|
| There's this old article on the subject:
| https://www.polygon.com/videos/2021/4/1/22352583/simcity-hid...
| icaruswept wrote:
| Depends on how much of the games underlying assumptions you can
| overwrite, and of course the fidelity you're going for. In our
| case we've modified everything from citizen lifecycles to
| traffic behaviour to population calculations based on square
| footage - but this is still more in the realm of "visualization
| and communication" than "professional planning tool".
| Stevvo wrote:
| For real life planning, many concept in Cities Skylines are
| also in professional software. e.g. in Autodesk Infraworks you
| can import roads, drag out a spline for a new metro line, then
| run a simulation to see the affect on traffic and other
| transport infrastructure.
| GistNoesis wrote:
| 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 ?
| icaruswept wrote:
| Will make a YouTube video (and an eval from a professional
| urban designer is coming up).
| calini wrote:
| Now I want to do this for my hometown.
| vkweb wrote:
| Same!
| icaruswept wrote:
| You should!
| thomasfl wrote:
| 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.
| ChaitanyaSai wrote:
| That sounds great. How would one go about this with a city like
| Mumbai?
| Pathogen-David wrote:
| Have you heard of eMOTIONAL Cities by any chance?
| https://emotionalcities-h2020.eu/
|
| It's basically an ongoing large-scale research project working
| to quantify the way people experience city spaces from a
| neuroscience perspective (or at least that's my understanding
| -- I work with some of the people who are working on it.) Maybe
| the work they're doing could be relevant to what you all are
| doing?
| sofixa wrote:
| 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).
|
| 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.
| icaruswept wrote:
| Glad you enjoyed it. "Lack of planning" is indeed the best way
| to describe Colombo.
| mbrain wrote:
| > _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._
|
| Is this specific project really funded by tax-payers money?
|
| > _Curated thousands of 3D assets to replace default buildings_
|
| How does this help to achieve any of these below ?
|
| > Potential applications include:
|
| > Simulating changes in roads, transport routes
|
| > Exploring effects of changes in private transport policies
|
| > Visualizing impact of new infrastructure like monorails or
| wider pavements
|
| > Assessing effects of introducing more green spaces or parking
| areas
| crubier wrote:
| I thought it was a pretty cool project, thought it was self-
| funded. But I agree I have no idea why I should finance this
| with my European taxpayer money.
| seper8 wrote:
| I'd rather they spend it on projects like these, where at
| least some people get joy playing videogames for work.
| Alternative is they get together and cook up some of the
| worst bureaucratic dogshit wrapped in catshit they call
| quality legislation.
| octocop wrote:
| wait until you see the Horizon Europe project
| diggan wrote:
| > Horizon Europe
|
| For people who are unaware, Horizon Europe is a research
| initiative that spans a wide range of interests, from
| nuclear energy to basically anything else, with the fine
| restriction that all research has to be open and public.
|
| https://research-and-
| innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding...
|
| I'm not sure what the "dunk" is supposed to mean here, are
| you saying funding research like this is a waste of
| taxpayers money?
| matly wrote:
| Agreed!
|
| I really enjoy seeing stuff like Horizon. There are so
| many bad examples for taxpayers money (e.g. Gaia-X), but
| Horizon ain't that.
| raverbashing wrote:
| People who dunk on public projects usually are unaware of
| all the research their own government finances
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| Or, it's possible, they are aware and don't support it. I
| don't think "My government is better then yours" was the
| goal here...
| Delk wrote:
| The same people might also dunk on public projects funded
| by their own governments.
|
| But I think they may not be quite aware of:
|
| 1. How many present-day things we take for granted have
| been enabled by basic research, sometimes on weird or
| unimportant-sounding topics.
|
| 2. How basic research can't necessarily quite go only for
| "important" and big results and skip the "unimportant"
| results and topics, or know in advance which ones are
| going to be useful and which ones aren't.
|
| 3. How investments in fundamental research are,
| proportionally speaking, actually quite small. The 100
| billion euros for Horizon Europe sounds like a lot, but
| that spans over seven years (2021 to 2027), and if it's
| funding a crapton of all kinds of research, there are
| also almost certainly going to be lots of results that
| are going to be useful. And, granted, also lots of ones
| that won't be, at least not directly. But even the vast
| majority of the useful ones are going to fly under the
| radar for just about everyone outside of the particular
| field so it's easy to not be aware of them (see also
| points 1 and 2).
|
| The EU has a population of ~450 million. The 100B euros
| over 7 years means the costs are ~225 euros per EU
| resident in total, or ~32 euros per year. I'm almost
| certainly paying more than the average EU resident, so
| let's say I'm paying 70 euros per year for the whole
| deal.
|
| I don't really have a huge problem with that. If it were
| for some kind of a small or narrow range of projects, I
| might. But it's not.
| hallux wrote:
| There is, of course, the possibility that he was being
| sarcastic.
| diggan wrote:
| Yeah, I suppose, but "EU throws tax payer money in the
| sea" and "EU stifles innovation with regulation" are so
| common sentiments around these parts that I'm unsure if
| it's sarcasm or not, 50/50 at this point.
| octocop wrote:
| I wasn't.
| phatfish wrote:
| With the prevalence of uniformed opinions about the EU
| and how it works on HN, that is a long shot (or big reach
| as the kids say).
| octocop wrote:
| I think projects this magnitude are not good, with a 100B
| euro pricetag that will be diluted into paying for
| bureaucracy and conferences. It's good that it's keeping
| people busy though, can't criticise that.
| diggan wrote:
| Just so others get a sense of the scale involved here:
|
| Currently the portal (CORDIS) has 13674 projects listed
| as part of Horizon Europe[0]. 100B eur would on average
| be ~73K EUR per project.
|
| While Horizon Europe itself is a huge project, the
| projects funded from it isn't always huge projects but
| sometimes small, incremental steps towards something, and
| sometimes larger projects.
|
| But with a perspective on how many projects are within
| the framework, 100B doesn't sound so much anymore.
|
| - [0] https://cordis.europa.eu/search?q=contenttype%3D%27
| project%2...
| octocop wrote:
| You think 100B doesn't sound much? Do you want to up the
| numbers to 200B instead? I mean after all it's Cancer
| research
| diggan wrote:
| > You think 100B doesn't sound much?
|
| I think "~73K EUR per project" doesn't sound much, and
| I'd happily pay more taxes if I could be sure research
| would receive more of my taxes.
| octocop wrote:
| I mean look at this project,
| https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101183057 "A digital
| twin of human milk". Sounds like a homerun right? I'd say
| 80% of the projects are just filled with buzzwords to get
| funding, and they rarely produce any good outcomes
| lagadu wrote:
| > rarely produce any good outcomes
|
| That's the nature of research.
| diggan wrote:
| > The research and innovation program, named GALATEA,
| stands as a pioneering venture targeting infant nutrition
| through the development of a digital twin of human milk.
|
| > The overarching objective is to create a sophisticated
| simulation platform that mirrors the intricate
| composition of human milk, allowing for the formulation
| of personalized nutrition plans for infants, particularly
| those born prematurely.
|
| > Anticipated outcomes include enhanced health outcomes
| for newborns, a deeper understanding of human milk for
| the advancement of artificial milk formulations, and the
| establishment of a robust research community dedicated to
| neonatal nutrition.
|
| I mean, the ideal outcomes sound pretty good. And the
| non-ideal outcome is we learnt about a bunch of stuff
| that doesn't work, that's how research works after all.
|
| What, exactly, is your critique about that particular
| research? That they call it a "digital twin", or what?
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| > The overarching objective is to create a sophisticated
| simulation platform that mirrors the intricate
| composition of human milk, allowing for the formulation
| of personalized nutrition plans for infants, particularly
| those born prematurely.
|
| I don't see any buzzwords there; simulation is an
| indispensable tool modern for biochemistry.
|
| If you stopped reading at the (admittedly daft) acronym,
| it's worth keeping in mind that, outside computer
| circles, 'digital twin' now refers to any kind of
| simulation or tracking of a physical resource. This is
| not some nebulous proposal for a blockchain NFT of human
| milk, it's genuine scientific research.
| phatfish wrote:
| It's not a monolithic project, it's a funding pool where
| an organisation can apply for access. It's not even
| limited to EU member states, the UK has returned as a
| partner after the Conservative party got their panties in
| a twist about it during Brexit.
| diggan wrote:
| And latest news is that Canada also joined up :)
|
| > Canada is joining the growing group of non-EU countries
| who have associated to the EU's research and innovation
| programme, Horizon Europe, and will work jointly on
| large-scale projects tackling our biggest challenges.
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_
| 24_...
|
| The more the merrier!
| superhuzza wrote:
| Horizon Europe funds many of the research projects my
| organisation works on, such as cancer research, COVID-19
| and general microbiology research...
| octocop wrote:
| Do you mind sharing this?
| karma_fountain wrote:
| The EU is the world's main source of and main destination for
| foreign direct investment (FDI). Inward and outward FDI play
| a fundamental role for generating sustainable economic
| growth, business opportunities, employment, technological
| development and innovation.
| rjh29 wrote:
| Seems worth it as a teaching method.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Playing Devil's Advocate, making the game look more like the
| real world (I am assuming this is what was meant by "curating
| 3D assets") would help _tremendously_ in "simulating",
| "exploring", "visualizing", and "assessing" the impacts and
| effects of changes and new additions to city policies and
| infrastructure to the average man.
|
| As for whether this is a good use of taxpayer money... well, it
| could be worse.
| icaruswept wrote:
| Yup. The 3D assets are from Steam workshop and impact visuals
| and population calculations (since pop calc is based on square
| footage). Otherwise, with Skylines' defaults, this would all
| look like the Netherlands.
|
| They're funding us to do this and a few other things:
|
| 2) Create and publish maps of Sri Lanka, especially for
| journalists to use for environment and land use reporting, for
| 2017-2024, using Sentinel-2 data
|
| 3) Build and publish our wiki of 70+ crops that can be grown in
| Sri Lankan backyards
|
| 4) Build and publish our open-source DIY agricultural sensor
| kit
|
| 5) Design and publish our journalism and media literacy course
| for young journalists and the general public
|
| In general, these folks (https://www.giz.de) are one of main
| european branches of NGO funding in the Global South. This is a
| very small project in their overall scheme of things - your tax
| money goes to a lot of places in the world.
| creesch wrote:
| It only seems fair to also include the previous block:
|
| _Ultimately, what we realized was that there had to be some
| visual way to bridge the gap between professional expertise
| (often confined to academic papers and reports) and public
| understanding._
|
| _Our virtual city of Colombo serves as a crude "Digital Twin,"
| offering a platform to:_
|
| _1. Visualize and understand current urban design issues_
|
| _2. Test and communicate potential infrastructure changes_
|
| _3. Explore the impact of policy decisions on traffic and
| population distribution_
|
| _4. Educate students and the public about urban planning
| concepts_
|
| Note how it specifically mentions public understanding and
| education twice. If you want the public to be able to relate to
| such a simulation, you want it to look as close as possible to
| the real thing. Otherwise, it will just remain an abstract
| simulation in which people will have trouble recognizing their
| own city.
| nirvanis wrote:
| > Key Limitations [...] > Perfect adherence to schedules in
| public transport, unlike real-world variation
|
| LOL
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| once upon a time, players would show their real-world cities in
| Simcity. Oh, how the mighty have fallen !
|
| Turns out there was a lot of strategizing behind this overtake,
| and its an interesting read [1]
|
| [1] https://www.polygon.com/features/2015/4/8/8340665/cities-
| sky...
| smittywerben wrote:
| SimCity 2013, a trainwreck of a game, switched to an agent-
| based simulation to compete with Cities Skylines. It ran
| horribly, inheriting all of CS's performance issues and gaining
| none of SC4's benefits. It also added network features (DRM) so
| EA can notify your Smart Fridge of your compensation copy of
| Need for Speed after they scammed you $60 for SC2013. Moving
| on.
|
| Here's the real debate: SimCity 4 vs Cities: Skylines. SC4 uses
| a population-based statistical simulation. Cities: Skylines,
| stemming from Paradox's Cities In Motion (built with Unity
| engine [1]) focuses on traffic modeling using an agent-based
| simulation. CS excels at traffic flows because it's designed
| for that purpose.
|
| It's the micro-level accuracy of Cities: Skylines "agents" and
| SC4's macro-level realism of its "Sims."
|
| Instead of creating individual agents for traffic simulation,
| SC4 runs a pathfinding heuristic to find the fastest route
| between Sims' homes and jobs. Maxis designed this simulation to
| run on a 2004 Pentium III 500MHz with 128 MB RAM. Surprisingly,
| it still holds up today.
|
| In CS, agents return to designated homes. In SC4, Sims returns
| to the nearest vacant home after work. SC4's simplified
| simulation reveals the optimal path for Sims. This difference
| might seem immersion-breaking, but perfect pathfinding uncovers
| the most efficient urban designs that might initially be
| hidden. Isn't that the whole point of the simulation?
|
| SC4 isn't perfect. Casual players ask: Why no diagonal roads?
| Why are my buses unused? Why aren't Sims going to work? The
| Network Addon Mod (NAM) [2], around 2004, has addressed some of
| these issues. It's not perfect, but it makes the simulation
| smarter, so Sims can make decisions closer to agent-based
| solutions. NAM is the band aid covering the small cut that
| Cities Skylines makes in its otherwise superior simulation.
|
| SimCity 4 still holds its own as a city simulator.
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220716021755/https://unity.com...
|
| [2] https://www.sc4nam.com/docs/feature-guides/the-nam-
| traffic-s...
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| curious why colombo? cities skylines doesn't exactly have tuktuks
| as a transportation option (though it really should...)
|
| Plus you don't need a city simulation to see that the city
| desperately needs a good metro.
| icaruswept wrote:
| > cities skylines doesn't exactly have tuktuks as a
| transportation option (though it really should...)
|
| It does now; we've modded it to use tuk assets based on the
| RDA's modal share estimates (see screenshots)
| cloudking wrote:
| Neat, now combine this with Project Sid for a full simulation...
| https://altera.al/
| dtx1 wrote:
| And Running on an overclocked epyc processor with dual 4090s you
| get a whole FPS in it too!
| icaruswept wrote:
| Until Windows starts updating in background!
| chaostheory wrote:
| 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.
| potamic wrote:
| They mention considering CUBE as an alternative.
| godber wrote:
| This is exceptionally cool work. I'd love to see it running.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| What is the actual point of this?
| simonmysun wrote:
| 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:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_City_Colombo
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Now try building Venice, Italy. Ha!
| UberFly wrote:
| "Cost-effectiveness: $19.99 for a perpetual license vs.
| $6,000-$8,600 for professional software like CUBE"
|
| I hope their efforts have carry over to other localities wanting
| to do something like this. They're a good example for others.
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