Blocks

A (city) block is basically a row of rectangular buildings (canonically blockshaped).

• superbuildings (a building complex)
• number of buildings
• average height of building
• variation in height
• averate size of building
• variation in size
• texture details
• explicit building that must be imported from elsewhere (e.g. important landmarks like ESB)
• variations from block shaped buildings
• commercial/residential/mixed
• vacant lots
• passageways

We even allow a building with zero height - this is just a vacant lot. There will be some special textures for this rendering.

Here is how the blocks parameter file might be structured:

[FILETYPE] "Block Parameters"
   [RECORD_TYPE] BLOCK_RECORD
        [BLOCK_ID] 1
        [AVERAGE_HEIGHT] 30
        [VARIANCE_HEIGHT] 10
        [NUM_OF_BUILDINGS] 5
        [TYPE] RESIDENTIAL
        //define the block shape
        [POLYGON] (100, 100), (100, 200), (200, 200), (200, 100)
        //define the nearby intersections by using pair
        //(street_id, segment_id),
        [INTERSECTIONS] (1,1), (3,2), (4,3), (1,2)
   [RECORD_END]
[ENDFILE]