Topic: Make a real city in Simutrans

[emirkir]

Hi! I got the idea of making my hometown in Simutrans. I've seen others do like New York and stuff like that but I wanted to make it "real", every street and similar houses from the reality by using Google Streetview. But, how do I start? Do I need to make a heightmap of the city first or is it some other way I could go?
NOTE: I have never made something like this before and I would like to explore Simutrans to its edges... (Is this even possible?)

Feel free to help me out by giving different strategys and a headstart! I would really appreciate that!
I'll provide maps and other stuff down below.

(EDIT) City name: Östersund, Sweden. Link for map on Google: https://www.google.se/maps/@63.1783774,14.6246914,13.82z
Link for PDF-maps on Google Drive. Note that you can edit them to make them better... LINK BROKEN! I'LL UPLOAD A NEW ON MAY 21:st!
GOAL FOR THIS: I would like to play around with my hometown in game and to have a project on-going.

Please correct me if I posted this in the wrong part of the forum...

[An_dz]

I don't know how this can be done, but I've heard you can use data from Open Street Map to get the heightmap.

[jameskuyper]

It's not really possible to accurately represent a real city in SImutrans (inaccurately representing one is easy, of course) - it's got serious problems with scale, in several different forms.
All ways are exactly 1 tile wide, all residential, commercial, and industrial buildings occupy exactly one tile. In real life, streets and railways are normally only a few meters wide. Buildings vary widely in size, ane are almost always much larger than that in both dimensions.
There's also problems of economic scale. The number of factories of each type that get randomly generated, and their production and consumption levels, are not particularly good matches to reality - they've been set primarily with the goal of making a good game, rather than an accurate simulation.

[Ters]

Also, all angles are 90 degrees. While some cities are planned to a regular grid, it normally applies to only certain parts, and the original plan may have been disregarded over time anyway, or even had exceptions from the start.

[Frank]

A long time ago, a player created the city of Prague in Simutrans.

https://www.simutrans-forum.de/mybb/showthread.php?tid=2620&pid=32434#pid32434

https://forum.simutrans.com/index.php/topic,4907.msg48167.html#msg48167

[emirkir]

@Frank: So it is possible... Eight years ago? Hasn't someone made a city in Simutrans since 2010? Wow...

@jameskuyper & @Ters: I'll try to make it as accurate as I can in Simutrans but I must reconstruct rounded roads in small parts of the city and I don't need to make every house as exact as the real map, but make it look like Östersund and to get bus lines and other traffic to work properly.

These images (in the Google Drive-link) that I've included in this reply doesn't contain the industry-part of the city where all factorys is.
Maps of Östersund on Google Drive: https://goo.gl/fyhykt
Map on Google Maps: https://www.google.se/maps/@63.1783774,14.6246914,13.82z
(If the Google Maps-link doesn't work; here are the search-terms: Östersund, Jämtlands Län, Sverige (or Sweden).)

Does someone have more tips about making a real city? (I'm new in heightmaps and such terrain things so that would be helpful...)

[EDIT] I forgot that all industry is in Lugnvik, a place north of the city. (If someone was interested...)
NOTE that this part isn't included in my images... See it on the real map.

[Ters]

One thing is getting the spatial aspects right, another is getting the temporal right. Don't expect the lines to go on time.

[An_dz]

As said the first thing is to get the heightmap, that's the terrain. But another thing is to get the roads, buildings, forests and rivers right. That is only achievable with manual building (as done for Praha in 2008) or to use the new squirrel script engine, both are a lot of work.

[emirkir]

I found a map that could probably work? What do you guys say?
Source from Lantmäteriet (Swedish "plot measuring" company)
Link to photo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wJWPWMOk_rTkMeD7GzocGxOYCaBG6hIy/view?usp=sharing
I'm totally new to heightmaps, I've never created one... Can you help me?

I think the manual building is part of the fun, but the terrain...

[uci]

What spatial resolution do you want to have on your map (tiles/km)? And how many km across?

[emirkir]

Area of map is:
NW           7,85 km              NE

7,27 km                           7,36 km

SW           7,96 km              SE

As you see, the map isn't perfectly rectangular, but these coordinates below are only approximate.
(Longitud, Latitud)
NW: 63.21359, 14.55413
NE: 63.21452, 14.71069
SW: 63.14823, 14.55448
SE: 63.14838, 14.71292
See this area in Google My Maps: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Vjr5BRrwa8TLfvTO0_aG3bQcHk0qV9Ro&usp=sharing

I don't know? What's the best resolution for the Simutrans map (all roads, buildings etc.) to fit this area (tiles/km)?
(I couldn't do the terrainmap in this ratio because the site that was from is under maintenance right now.)

[emirkir]

Now, when I have access to the page again I have got a new shaded terrainmap with an approximate square of the coordinates above.
See image on Google Drive: https://goo.gl/8CskWF

I've read through this tutorial and only if I get the resolution right I can start this project:
https://maps.simutrans.com/tutorial.html

[emirkir]

Here's the final heightmap (png) that I'll convert into a ppm file.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tBr-8tRUp0L7yHelD_iJtau6Q-RJ4wxV/view?usp=sharing

[Carl]

One thing that could help you out a lot is open geographical data. I don't know what you have in Sweden, but in the UK we have the Ordnance Survey:
https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/opendatadownload/products.html

You can't put any of this directly into Simutrans. But you can use it as a reference to help with placement of roads, places, etc.