British Road Detailing Pack

(Previously British-Style Road Markings, British-Style Road Items, & British-Style Road Objects)

A collection of road markings, road signs and roadside clutter for decorating UK maps for OMSI 2.

Description

This is the second version of my pack of British road and roadside detailing objects for OMSI 2. It is entirely incompatible with the previous version.

Contained within this pack are a variety of road signs and road markings, made to conform closely to the DfT Standards. It doesn't and never will contain every sign in the UK, as most non-generic signs are custom made for the location, however it aims to cover most bases for map builders. Also included is a small collection of roadside clutter items such as road cones, telegraph poles, bus stop shelters, etc..

Redistribution

This pack is released under my Unrestricted License. This license is equivalent to Public Domain, but with some additional recommendations for the benefit of the OMSI 2 community.

Download

Version 2 Stable

The latest stable version (2.4c) of British Road Detailing Pack 2 is available from the following places:

Version 1 Deprecated

The final version (1.5.3) of British Road Detailing Pack 1 is available, solely for the purpose of getting old maps working, from the following places:

Usage

Traffic signs (including road markings and traffic signals) are legislated in the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions, but more human-readable guidance for traffic authorities is contained in the Traffic Signs Manual. Additional guidance is published through Local Transport Notes and Traffic Advisory Leaflets. Guidance on the design of the roads themselves can be found in the Design Manual for Roads & Bridges. These documents are guidance for how things should be done now—if you're making a real map or taking strong inspiration from a real place then how things have actually been done is what you should try to achieve.

General advice for OMSI map development is to start with a clean install of the game, only installing things you want to be requirements for the players of your map. Keep regular backups, as it is entirely possible to corrupt individual tiles or the whole map even when using the official map editor!

General Guidance for Signs and Signals

None of the signs or signals come with poles—this means that if you want to place them on structures, street furniture, etc. you can do that without worrying about hiding the pole.

Signs

When wanting signs on dedicated poles you must place the pole first, then place the sign. This means you can Attach to object... the sign onto the pole. The sign will align to the "front" of the pole—if the sign isn't pointing in the right direction then you can rotate the pole to get the sign to face the correct direction (rotating the sign itself may give undesirable results).

If you want to attach a second sign to the opposite side of the pole—e.g. to have speed limit signs on both sides of a pole—you can do this in the same way as mounting a sign normally, but change the AttPntNr. to 1. This attachment point places the sign on the "back" of the pole.

If you want to attach a second sign below an existing sign, you can Attach to object... the second sign to the first, this will attach the second sign below the first with a small gap. This is particularly useful for attaching supplementary plates to signs. (If you find any signs overlap when attached please let me know so I can fix it.)

Signals

Signals are much the same as signs, except that instead of attaching the signal directly to the pole, there is an intermediary bracket. The brackets should be attached to AttPntNr. 2—they are modelled differently to the signs, such that they can be rotated freely around the poles so that you can attach multiple brackets to the same pole, pointing in different directions. You can also rotate the signals a little on the brackets, which can be useful in some situations.

In most situations the standard bracket is to be used, this has just one attachment point on the end. The medium bracket can be useful if you need to mount two traffic lights pointing in the same or similar directions to the same pole—you can rotate the traffic light on the end of the bracket to make a V with the brackets but still have both lights pointing forward, for example. The long bracket can be useful if you need to mount a main signal on the same pole as a pedestrian and cycle light, or if space constraints mean it's not possible to locate the pole where the signal head wants to be—it has 3 attachment points for each side and the end respectively.

The supplementary signal aspects as much the same as supplementary signs: you place them after the main signal and attach them to the main signal.

The button boxes can also be attached to poles using AttPntNr. 3, this fixes the box to the correct mounting height from the bottom of the pole.

When placing a sign or signal you need to ensure that the mounting height is suitable for the location:

• When above non-pedestrianised areas (e.g. verges) this should be between 0.9 and 1.5 metres from the road surface
• When above pedestrianised areas (e.g. pavements) this should be at least 2.1 metres
• When above any area a cyclist is likely to be riding, this should be at least 2.3 metres

All signs in this pack have their top edges aligned to 2.7 metres when not attached to a pole. A 3 metre pole is a pretty standard height to use for most signs and a 3.5 metre pole is standard for traffic lights. The base of the pole should be level with the surface it is planted in.

Special Characters in Transport Fonts

Imperial Height / Width Restrictions

The symbols for feet and inches in a measurement like 6′-6″ are the prime and double prime symbols—the prime and hyphen is mapped to ` and the double prime to ". The ' character is mapped to the apostrophe (used for possession or abbreviation).

Narrow Whitespace Characters

The standard space character is 2.5 sw wide, but there are occasions when a thinner space is required: use a | character for a 1.5 sw space and a ¦ character for a 1 sw space.

• The most common use case is for road (and junction) numbers—there should be a 1 sw space between the letter and number, e.g.: M ⁠20, A ⁠292, B ⁠2229, E ⁠15, J ⁠10A
• Hyphenated place names like Ross ⁠‑ ⁠on ‑ ⁠Wye use 1.5 sw spaces either side of the hyphens
• When listing place names or road numbers a 1.5 sw space is used after the comma, and the same space is used when a place name is abbreviated like M. ⁠Keynes
• Where distance units are abbreviated, a smaller space is used—1 ⁠m with a 1 sw space, 200 ⁠yds with a 1.5 sw space

Fractions (Transport Heavy only)

Fractional distances can be expressed on signs that use the Transport Heavy typeface (dark text on a light background) using # for ½, [ & ] for ¼ & ¾ and { & } for ⅓ & ⅔.

Uppercase Slash

The Transport typeface includes a forward slash in both lowercase and uppercase—they are mapped to / and \ respectively.

Traffic Signals

In the UK the Red + Amber phase is 2 seconds long and the Amber phase 3 seconds; these durations do not vary with the speed of approaching traffic. Signal-controlled junctions are not recommended where traffic speed exceeds 65 mph.

The "intergreen" period between conflicting movements can be as little as 3 seconds (i.e. the Red + Amber overlaps completely with the Amber), but longer is often necessary to allow traffic to clear the junction. This is especially true in OMSI as the AI has a habit of emergency braking for an Amber, stopping just past the signal line, and then continuing into the junction anyway.

In the Object Editor there are 3 possible values for each of the four phases; with my signals these can be used when creating junctions with filter or indicative arrows, or Pelican crossings:

0. Normal Red
1. Red with Green Filter Arrow
3. Normal Red + Amber
4. Red + Amber with Green Filter Arrow
6. Normal Green or Green Substitute Arrows
7. Green with Green Indicative Arrow
8. Flashing Amber (Pelican crossing)
9. Normal Amber
12. Off

Green Arrows

In the UK there are three ways that green arrows can be used:

Substitute arrows replace the usual "full green" circle to emphasise that drivers may only proceed through the junction in the indicated direction(s)—where a signal only has arrows they will all illuminate together on the Green phase (6).

Filter arrows illuminate during the main Red phase, usually to allow left-turns into a side road concurrently with traffic exiting that side road; they stay on during the Red + Amber phase and extinguish with the full green.

Indicative arrows are used with "early cut-off"—right-turning traffic that has to give way under a full green is given extra time to turn without conflict, as indicated by a green arrow. The green arrow extinguishes with the full green at the start of the Amber phase.

Although the use of alternate phase values has the benefit of allowing a signal head with filter/indicative arrow to be placed as a single object, the AI will not react to the arrows and so separate "invisible" traffic lights (with no signals assigned) are still required. For filter arrows this should be a copy of the main sequence but with the green phase starting when the main changes from 0 to 1; for indicative arrows the green phase should be replaced with Off (12) until the arrow illuminates.

Belisha Beacons

These need to be parented to themselves (or each other) in order to flash—they are both a traffic light and a "junction" with a traffic light sequence.