West End Bridge

I've disovered through Google Map measurements and SimCity grid conversions that the West End Bridge is not in the Golden Triangle city (what I've named the large square containing South Side, North Side and the Golden Triangle) of the regional map. It's in the medium square due west, and just barely. The West End bridge seems to land right where the river bends.

first things first

What to do first? It's so difficult to decide, so I've decided to start a list of what I think is most important.

1) Bridges: given the limitations of the game in regards to bridges (you can't build roads under them), and their expense (no, I'm not cheating), they have to come first. The problem with recreating pgh's bridges is that they're diagonal in terms of the grid, so you have to split the difference in landing placement, or pick one end and pivot the other.

One trick I'm gonna try is to raise the land where the bridges land across the rivers. This shortens the bridges, but gets the higher bridges at the right altitude, and you can build tunnels underneath them. Particularly where the bridges and the parkway intersect.

2.) Figuring out the scale is bear, because I can't figure out the exact latitude and longitude of the picture. Adding it to a layer of Google Earth is pretty difficult as is (I know what I want to do with programs like this, and photoshop, but can't figure out how to do it half the time)..

I'll do some more work tonight.

the bmp file

here is the config.bmp for the above pic.

does anyone know what the lat/long measurements are for the map by the way?

greyscale image for pittsburgh

This is the jpeg i am using for Pittsburgh, which I found on Simtropolis.com. It's an excellent shot, despite cutting off the westernmost section of the Carnegie area that is within the city limits. I like this pic because it has the 'other' Point where the Yough and Mon meet.

The config.bmp that goes with this is also excellent, as it gets a lot of the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh within the same square.

Google Earth and SimCity

has anyone had any success with using Google Earth with Sim City? I find it difficult to paste as a layer the topographic map that SimCity uses and get it synched up.