Fix terrible traffic lights

[boss3409]

TL;DR traffic lights suck in both games and there are super easy fixes, like for support

Unnecessarily long red lights at traffic signals are a large issue in both games. We should all be familiar with some especially awful signals in v2 like the ones by DOT/pool which for some reason are red in all directions for a while, or at the Prom end of the 401 which has four protected left turns which makes driving straight through the intersection feel like a couple minutes. This added time comes from unneeded protected left turns or because smaller intersecting streets are green for too long. Today I went into v3 and found some more annoying signals:

This intersection by the bus depot/ SCMC has obnoxious waiting times for the main road considering it only intersects with usually empty parking lots.

This intersection by the RW city hall wasn’t terrible. The green light was around 20 seconds in both directions, which doesn’t make that much sense since the side street intersecting with the large highway won’t have much traffic.

This one also wasn’t terrible, but the light was inexplicably red in all directions for about 10 seconds??

The worst one I found was this one by the courthouse and mall, where the signal going down the main road was green for about 20 seconds and then red for over a minute as a result of the left turn signals from the parking lots, which is ridiculous considering there’s zero traffic ever coming from these lots.

Most of the other intersections in Prom have a dedicated green light for the left turn lanes with both other directions red for the duration, which would make sense in real life but is unnecessary in v3 with low traffic volume on the roads.

There are a few simple fixes to these problems:

1. Remove the protected left turn signals and replace them with something that doesn’t add a turning cycle
2. Keep important roads (like the FS98 in RW) green all the time and have the small intersecting roads (like the one pictured) on either a shorter timer or a traffic sensor that will turn the main road red only when a car comes
3. Replace some traffic signals with just single red/yellow flashers (or even just stop signs) at some intersections

These changes should be easy to implement in both games, even the traffic sensors. The traffic lights were done with the TwentyTwoPilots plugin, which means that adding sensors and changing signals should be very easy. I toyed around with the plugin for some time, and while I couldn’t figure out the sensors, it appears that all that needs to be done is change the type of arrow signal and change some IntValues that control the duration of the light.

Like the post if you’d like to see these changes implemented.

[CanadlanLaw]

See I’m not saying do this, but running reds is always an option. I do not encourage breaking the law.

[fbiagentabc]

just run the red no cop no stop, worst case scenario you get a citation

[Dylan56202]

The plug-in used was poorly designed and is likely far outdated now.

The problem is that each light runs as if each direction has a protected left turn signal too. So for intersections without a turn signal, the lights will appear red for like 12 seconds because it doesn’t know there’s no left turn signal. And for intersections where you want both the left turn signal and normal signal to be green at the same time, each one just runs separate from one other.

Ideally each script would need to be customized to the way each intersection is setup (apart from a normal 4 way with left turn signals). It’s not hard, it’s just time consuming, which is probably the excuse the dev team will give for not fixing it.

There used to be traffic sensors for the 401 interchange which was cool, but instead of adding a proper buffer between detection checks to prevent lag it was just taken out completely.

[Luffwaffle09]

support’

[blaadam]

Traffic lights in v3 temporarily use TTP’s plug in, in the future they’ll be rescripted

[cityuser]

When they’re re-scripted in V3, you could maybe let DOT figure out the cycles and timings for each intersection.

[boss3409]

This was a thing I noticed when testing myself, the setting causing that can simply be turned off.

[boss3409]

The TTP plug-in isn’t bad, just the way it was implemented imo. I say we just keep using it, unless we add the ability for DOT to change cycles like city said then it’d be a good idea to script our own

[blaadam]

Everything in v3 will - eventually - be made by ourselves without relying on a third party, this lets us know how things work ontop of customising it and optimising it to our needs.

[boss3409]

I say just for a temporary solution we do the quick fixes