YARN & AASHTO Roads as Freeways?

[ModelerMJ]

I'm trying to lay down a U.S. Interstate highway, 2 lanes in each direction, with (obviously, I think?) all the cars going the same way on each side. The sides do not run exactly parallel to / same distance from each other (they wind back and forth), so I am looking for freeway 'sides' that can be used independantly of each other.

I am aware of the YARN roads and have tried them, but somehow cannot find the magic switch and/or right piece of road to get cars traveling in the same direction in all lanes (I always seem to get bi-directional traffic).

I am also aware of the AASHTO roads and again I have tried them. There is an item that would seem, from its description, to be exactly what I want; but when I lay it down, the spline points are way off to one side of the center, cars do not travel on the road but instead travel off to one side (and again I get bi-directional traffic), and I also have to lay it in the wrong direction to get the white and yellow lines to show up on the correct sides.

I must be doing something really dumb here, and would really appreciate a nudge in the right direction and/or a pointer toward some more in-depth info about how to use what I am sure are two fabulous road systems. I have searched the forums, but so far haven't found these answers, although it is entirely possible that I have not used the right search terms.

Thanks in advance,
-Mike

Edit: I have continued to experiment with these roads and have found that I also have carz crossing over the center dividers (driving right through the guard rail, no less) and passing through oncoming cars as if both of them were ghosts. Is this some kind of known issue with carz?

 

[schweitzerdude]

I have started using YARN roads for freeways

I am using the YARN 4-lane with divider and the traffic stays on the right as you would expect. Previously, I had been using a parallel pair of the 2 lane YARN roads to make a divided highway with a grassy center median and then its a demolition derby free-for-all as you describe. If there is a solution I'd like to see it. In rural areas a pair of two lane roads, one for each direction, is much more realistic. I like this series of roads because they have matching bridges/underpassses/off-ramps so it's a uniform appearance.

My primary reason for commenting is that I am having a similar problem with some YARN roads/bridges, I have cars stalling on the center line of one of the YARN 2-lane bridges, and also on the 4 lane center lane divider.

Experienced YARN/YARNish users please help us.

 

[JCitron]

I came across the Sen City Road Switcher kuid2:76656:500000:1. It was not built-in to TS12, but came in with SEN City which I downloaded ages ago. Maybe this might be useful for setting up traffic in a single direction. I don't know if it works since I only glanced at the manual which I recently found while searching for something else that was missing from another route I've been hunting down content for.

http://www.trainzdepot.net/infusions/pro_download_panel/download.php?did=2175

The problem is it's in German. My German isn't very good since I haven't spoken it in about 35 years and now consists only of music expressions such as Etwas Langsamer, which means somewhat slower!

John

 

[Gameboy900]

I came across the Sen City Road Switcher kuid2:76656:500000:1. It was not built-in to TS12, but came in with SEN City which I downloaded ages ago. Maybe this might be useful for setting up traffic in a single direction. I don't know if it works since I only glanced at the manual which I recently found while searching for something else that was missing from another route I've been hunting down content for.

http://www.trainzdepot.net/infusions/pro_download_panel/download.php?did=2175

The problem is it's in German. My German isn't very good since I haven't spoken it in about 35 years and now consists only of music expressions such as Etwas Langsamer, which means somewhat slower!

John

There's always google translate!:wave:

 

[JCitron]

There's always google translate!:wave:

Not from the PDF with pictures that have call-outs. You can't select the text because they're embedded into the pictures. Nice thought though.

John

 

[rweber95]

Converting graphic text to ASCII

I have a free, OCR program called PDF Creator that can read the characters in any graphic file, including PDF format, and create an ASCII text file that you can edit and/or print. I've used it to read some of the session instructions that are in German and then processed them thru Google Translate to get English instruction. The download link to PDF Creator is http://www.newocr.com/

Bob Weber

 

[Retro00064]

Lay a short section of no-traffic invisible road at the end of the one-way road that you do not want carz spawning from. That should help keep them going to right direction.

Also, you might want to add short diverging invisible road spurs along the one-way road to catch wrong-way carz.

The below screenshots might help illustrate this.

The invisible road spurs need to diverge off to the left and going the wrong way to catch the carz, as you can see in the screenshot. You may want to use invisible roads with traffic for these spurs in at least some instances to possibly help spawn carz going in the right direction.

YARN does not have proper roads for divided highways, unless Streadway made some (I would not know). The above road is part of my own work-in-progress revision to YARN. I have made my own reskins of GFisher's AASHTO and GF two-lane roads to make divided highways with, and they work nicely. The divided highway pieces in the AASHTO set that GFisher made were apparently not made to have traffic.

Regards,

Retro.

 

[JCitron]

Lay a short section of no-traffic invisible road at the end of the one-way road that you do not want carz spawning from. That should help keep them going to right direction.

Also, you might want to add short diverging invisible road spurs along the one-way road to catch wrong-way carz.

The below screenshots might help illustrate this.
The invisible road spurs need to diverge off to the left and going the wrong way to catch the carz, as you can see in the screenshot. You may want to use invisible roads with traffic for these spurs in at least some instances to possibly help spawn carz going in the right direction.

YARN does not have proper roads for divided highways, unless Streadway made some (I would not know). The above road is part of my own work-in-progress revision to YARN. I have made my own reskins of GFisher's AASHTO and GF two-lane roads to make divided highways with, and they work nicely. The divided highway pieces in the AASHTO set that GFisher made were apparently not made to have traffic.

Regards,

Retro.

Thanks Retro for the tutorial.

@Bob. I've done this before using the same program, but if the text is drawn and embedded into pictures, this won't work because the text really isn't there.

John

 

[ModelerMJ]

Thanks very much, Retro; and also to everyone who is responding. I will give your recommendations a try. Too bad we have to go to all this extra effort, though, to make something this basic to the game operate as it should.

Regards,
-Mike

 

[ModelerMJ]

Found a Partial Solution

In searching for more info about how roads work, I stumbled upon a post that led me to some items by 'tume'. One of these, 'Road_Freeway_105' (kuid:606026:100036), has 2 lanes of traffic going in the same direction by default - and is therefore, at least functionally, just what I have been looking for. However, while it has a nice appearance and I am certainly not knocking the efforts of the creator, it does not have the yellow and white line combinations of the AASHTO roads, and it always has guardrails.

Curious, I looked at its config.txt to see how it was different from the AASHTO items, and among other things I noticed two lines that seemed significant:

isfreeway 1
numlanes 2

Hmm, seems I now remember seeing a reference to the 'isfreeway' tag in my travels as well. So I cloned the 'AASHTO 4 Lane Highway LimitedAccess Split' item (by gfisher), and added those 2 lines to the config.txt. Placing it in a test map, I suddenly found myself with 2 lanes of traffic going in the same direction on this road. Woo hoo! Correct traffic flow on a road that has the exactly the realistic appearance I want - correct line colors and no always-there-guardrails . . .

But, a problem remains. The spline points in the AASHTO item are off to one side - they are not centered along the middle of the road - and so the cars do not drive on the road. Instead they drive along 2 lanes centered on the off-to-one-side spline points, which basically has them 4-wheeling it through the grass at the side of the road.

If I could find out how to move the spline points to the center of the road, so that the cars actually drive in the lanes, then I would have exactly the piece of Interstate Highway I am after - and so would anyone else who is trying to replicate this type of roadway.

So, I must ask: Is there a way that I, as a user, can relocate the positions of the spline points as needed? Or can the location of the spline points only be altered by the original author?

Thanks in advance,
-Mike

 

[Retro00064]

As I said above, the divided highway in the AASHTO set was apparently not designed to have traffic. Just make a reskin of one of the two-lane AASHTO roads with shoulders like I did, modifying the texture to suit its use for a divided highway. Just use the road texture from AASHTO_40FT_DashedLine_EM_W (<kuid:106916:10308>), modifying it to make the white line on the right side of the texture yellow. Note that the resulting road will have shoulders on both sides (not just the right side), which may be good for some uses and may not be good for others; you may be able to change this by editing the road's opacity map, asphalta.bmp.

You will not be able to modify the location of the spline points on the default AASHTO divided highways without modifying the mesh, unless it is possible to use the "position" or whatever tag that seems to be available for mesh-tables in newer versions of Trainz.

Regards,

Retro.

 

[ModelerMJ]

Retro, thanks for the advice (and patience). I really do appreciate your input but I'm not yet at the point where I can take on a reskin project, so I'm going to continue to search for and experiment with various combinations of existing items (and tricks as you pointed out so nicely).

Along that line, shortly after my last post, I did find a set of assets on the DLS I think will give me a big head start toward achieving the effect I am after. They have the correct line colors, no guardrails, and 2 lanes of traffic going in the same direction at realistic (fast) highway speeds. I think I didn't find them sooner because there are no spaces in the names.

Author: atilabarut

Items:
USfreeway1lane1wayTraffic,<kuid:131986:1144>
USfreeway2lane1wayNoTraffic,<kuid:131986:1043>
USfreeway2lane1wayTraffic,<kuid:131986:1143>
USfreeway3Lane1WayTraffic,<kuid:131986:1141>
USfreeway4lane1wayTraffic,<kuid:131986:1145>
USfreeway5lane1wayTrafic,<kuid:131986:1146>
USfreeway6lane1wayTraffic,<kuid:131986:1148>

Regards,
-Mike

 

[slabay]

Offset Spline Points

I haven't been using them with cars so I never noticed the off-roading thing, but there is an AAHTSO 4-lane divided highway with the attachment points in the center. If you use the two-lane one-way sets laid in opposite directions, the offset attachment points will join with the center attachment points on the 4-lane version to create a true divided highway.

It doesn't solve the crazy cars problem. Can't wait for the sweet YARN2 roads!!

---Scott

 

[ModelerMJ]

Is this the Sen City Info you are looking for?

Happened across this:

http://www.boatztrainz.co.uk/signals.pdf

It starts with "The 10 Sen City Signal assets, (kuid:76656:24010 to kuid:76656:24019) may be placed in Surveyor and simply used as ordinary Trainz signals. "

Is this the document you guys were talking about?

Regards,
-Mike

 

[schweitzerdude]

To ModelerMJ re atilabarut's one way roads

Along that line, shortly after my last post, I did find a set of assets on the DLS I think will give me a big head start toward achieving the effect I am after. They have the correct line colors, no guardrails, and 2 lanes of traffic going in the same direction at realistic (fast) highway speeds. I think I didn't find them sooner because there are no spaces in the names.

Author: atilabarut

Items:
USfreeway1lane1wayTraffic,<kuid:131986:1144>
USfreeway2lane1wayNoTraffic,<kuid:131986:1043>
USfreeway2lane1wayTraffic,<kuid:131986:1143>
USfreeway3Lane1WayTraffic,<kuid:131986:1141>
USfreeway4lane1wayTraffic,<kuid:131986:1145>
USfreeway5lane1wayTrafic,<kuid:131986:1146>
USfreeway6lane1wayTraffic,<kuid:131986:1148>

Regards,
-Mike

I downloaded these roads and they are just the thing we were looking for. And all the lanes seem to have traffic.

I downloaded his two lane 1-way bridges and they match the 2 lane 1-way roads and work as well, but the cars (which as you said go very fast on the roads) slow down on the bridges (also on other bridges not by atilabarut) but someone could probably fix this. Worse case scenario, you could use a bridge that did not have traffic, even a two track rail bridge, and then lay down atilabarut's 2-lane 1-way roads on top of the bridge instead of connecting to it. I'm going to experiment with them in future days. Thanks for letting us know about them.

 

[JCitron]

I downloaded these roads and they are just the thing we were looking for. And all the lanes seem to have traffic.

I downloaded his two lane 1-way bridges and they match the 2 lane 1-way roads and work as well, but the cars (which as you said go very fast on the roads) slow down on the bridges (also on other bridges not by atilabarut) but someone could probably fix this. Worse case scenario, you could use a bridge that did not have traffic, even a two track rail bridge, and then lay down atilabarut's 2-lane 1-way roads on top of the bridge instead of connecting to it. I'm going to experiment with them in future days. Thanks for letting us know about them.

People drive that way around here. So what's the problem?

Those roads are great for highways.

Thanks!

John

 

[ModelerMJ]

Those roads are great for highways.
John

Yes they are... as long as you don't need to get on or off the highway, and don't need to transition from one type of section to another (i.e. 2-lane to 3-lane). What we have here are great traveling lanes -- now I just need to find out how to integrate them cleanly with e.g. YARN and so on, and how to transition between the different numbers of lanes. I have by no means searched the entire DLS though, so it's quite possible that I just have not found the appropriate pieces (or somethnig suitable) yet.

To help me undertand what's actually available, I've been compiling a list of all the authors who seem to have anythnig to do with highways / freeways / roads / streets / signs / other related items (so far I have found 48). At this point I am basically just poring through the list of each of their offerings in CM (and dropping some of their items into a test route), trying to get an idea of how the pieces from different sets might (or might not) work together.

I think YARN from maddy25 and YARNish from streadway, and the many offerings from bnsf50, are probably going to give me most (if not all) of what I need as far as city streets, country roads and RR crossings go. It's really just the interstates that are causing me grief at this point. They are very prominent in my route so I feel it's important to represent them as well as I can... especially one particular (fairly complex) interchange that is iconic in the area (it's commonly referred to as "Kamikaze Curve", even in the traffic reports on the local radio stations).

Regards,
-Mike

 

[JCitron]

Yes they are... as long as you don't need to get on or off the highway, and don't need to transition from one type of section to another (i.e. 2-lane to 3-lane). What we have here are great traveling lanes -- now I just need to find out how to integrate them cleanly with e.g. YARN and so on, and how to transition between the different numbers of lanes. I have by no means searched the entire DLS though, so it's quite possible that I just have not found the appropriate pieces (or somethnig suitable) yet.

To help me undertand what's actually available, I've been compiling a list of all the authors who seem to have anythnig to do with highways / freeways / roads / streets / signs / other related items (so far I have found 48). At this point I am basically just poring through the list of each of their offerings in CM (and dropping some of their items into a test route), trying to get an idea of how the pieces from different sets might (or might not) work together.

I think YARN from maddy25 and YARNish from streadway, and the many offerings from bnsf50, are probably going to give me most (if not all) of what I need as far as city streets, country roads and RR crossings go. It's really just the interstates that are causing me grief at this point. They are very prominent in my route so I feel it's important to represent them as well as I can... especially one particular (fairly complex) interchange that is iconic in the area (it's commonly referred to as "Kamikaze Curve", even in the traffic reports on the local radio stations).

Regards,
-Mike

Good luck on your compilation project. There are road transitions and there are some on and off ramps made by Maddy. You could probably fake the off and on ramps if you want using these. Maddy's Yarn roads also have a sixth lane for on ramp connection if you want to try these.

Kamikaze Curve? Is this the Southern Tier Expressway? I haven't been down there in ages - I think maybe 1976 or so when I visited my uncle in Johnson City.

We have scary corners on I95 (Route 128) where people come to a dead stop because there's a slightly sharp curve in the road. There are accidents along there all the time because people go from 70 to 20!

And the creeps - there are plenty of those too. If you want a realistic traffic mix, you need to put a creep in the middle tying up traffic. They're doing 65 alright - 65kph instead of 65 mph!

John

 

[schweitzerdude]

Some testing results of atilabarut's 2-lane 1 way roads

I agree they seem to work well by themselves but do not always play well with others. I built a divided 4-lane interstate with his 1-way 2 lane roads. All was well until the interstate needed to end and merge down into a 2 lane, 2 way YARN road. Since atilabarut's 2-lane 1 way roads have traffic in both lanes, a car in the left lane will end up driving on the left on the 2-lane 2way YARN road. Why the YARN road allows this is a mystery, but the result is not good. The reverse is also true - a car on a YARN road driving on the right may end up going the wrong way on atilabarut's 1-way roads.

I believe atilabarut's roads have potential but we need to do more experimenting. If anyone has solutions, let's hear them.

 

[gattka504]

Thanks for saying those roads, because i was spamming Tume asking for the secret to his 1 way roads