Importing a new city into A/B Street

This process isn't easy yet. Please email dabreegster@gmail.com or file a Github issue if you hit problems. I'd really appreciate help and PRs to improve this.

Quick start

Use this if you want to import a city on your computer without making it available to other users yet.

  • If you're using the binary release and have a .osm file, just do: ./importer --oneshot=map.osm.

  • If you're building from source, do: ./import.sh --oneshot=map.osm. If you can't run import.sh, make sure you have all dependencies. If you're using Windows and the console logs appear in a new window, try running the command from import.sh directly, changing the $@ at the end to --oneshot=map.osm or whatever arguments you're passing in.

The oneshot importer will will generate a new file in data/system/oneshot/maps that you can then load in the game. If you have an Osmosis polygon filter (see below), you can also pass --oneshot_clip=clip.poly to improve the result. You should first make sure your .osm has been clipped: osmconvert large_map.osm -B=clipping.poly --complete-ways -o=smaller_map.osm.

By default, driving on the right is assumed. Use --oneshot_drive_on_left to invert.

How to get .osm files

If the area is small enough, try the "export" tool on https://www.openstreetmap.org. You can download larger areas from https://download.bbbike.org/ or http://download.geofabrik.de/index.html, then clip them to a smaller area. Use geojson.io or geoman.io to draw a boundary around the region you want to simulate and save the GeoJSON locally. Use cargo run --bin geojson_to_osmosis < boundary.geojson to convert that GeoJSON to the Osmosis format required by osmconvert.

Note that you may hit problems if you use JOSM to download additional data to a .osm file. Unless it updates the <bounds/> element, A/B Street will clip out anything extra. The best approach is to explicitly specify the boundary with --oneshot_clip.

Including the city to A/B street more permanently

Follow this guide to add a new city to A/B street by default so other users can use it as well.

  1. Make sure you can run import.sh -- see the instructions. You'll need Rust, osmconvert, gdal, etc.

  2. Create a new directory: mkdir importer/config/your_city

  3. Use geojson.io or geoman.io to draw a boundary around the region you want to simulate and save the geojson locally.

  4. Use cargo run --bin geojson_to_osmosis < boundary.geojson to convert that geojson to the Osmosis format required by osmconvert. This tool writes one file per feature in the input, so you'd then mv boundary0.poly importer/config/your_city/region_name.poly, repeating if you drew multiple polygons.

  5. Copy importer/config/tel_aviv/cfg.json to importer/config/your_city/cfg.json and edit this file. See here for details on the different fields. The defaults are a reasonable start; the only thing you need to change is osm_url.

  6. Run it: ./import.sh --city=your_city --raw --map

  7. Update .gitignore, following tel_aviv as an example.

Send a PR with your changes! I'll generate everything and make it work with updater, so most people don't have to build everything from scratch.

Also, you can divide the city into multiple regions, repeating step 4 and declaring more polygon boundaries. The boundaries may overlap each other, and they don't have to cover all of the space. Picking good boundaries may take trial-and-error; the goal is to keep the resulting map file size small, so that it loads quickly, while capturing all of the area needed to simulate something interesting. This is easiest when you have some local knowledge of the area, and at least a vague goal in mind for what you want to study.

Next steps

OpenStreetMap isn't the only data source we need. If you look at the import pipeline for Seattle, you'll see many more sources for parking, GTFS bus schedules, person/trip demand data for scenarios, etc. Most of these aren't standard between cities. If you want to make your city more realistic, we'll have to import more data. Get in touch.

You may notice issues with OSM data while using A/B Street. Some of these are bugs in A/B Street itself, but others are incorrectly tagged lanes. Some resources for fixing OSM: