Competition Questions
What is the Future City Competition?
This nationwide program is part of National Engineers Week. It offers students a fun way to learn about engineering and cities of the future.
Who can participate?
The Southern Nevada Regional Competition is open to 7th and 8th grade students enrolled in public or private schools in Nevada. While multiple teams from each school can participate, each school is limited to 2 teams that can participate in the region-wide finals.
What is the competition format?
Groups of 3 students work as a team under the guidance of a teacher and a practicing engineer. Teams design a city using the popular, award-winning SimCity 4 software. Then, teams build a scale model of a city section and write a 500-word essay on an assigned engineering topic. The competition culminates with a team presentation in front of judges from various engineering disciplines.
What does the teacher do?
The teacher guides the student teams to completion of their projects, but does NOT need to know the SimCity software, does NOT need to have knowledge of engineering, and does not need to know an engineer to participate. Teachers can organize the competition as a classroom activity, a club activity, an “extra-credit” project, an after-school activity or any other format that is convenient. Contact the regional coordinator for more information how the Future City Program meets National and State Teaching Standards.
How do I sign-up?
Fill out the online registration form on the link above before October 15, 2010, select one orientation session and submit the web form. You are ready to get started!
If I have more questions, whom can I contact?
Please contact the Regional Coordinators.
Technical Questions
I’m having difficulty wiht the SimCity 4 on an Intel-based Macintosh Computer?
The SimCity 4 software has not been updated to include the necessary code to run natively on an Intel-based Macintosh computer. You might experience better performance by using an Power-PC based Macintosh, or by using BootCamp and running the game under Windows XP.
What do I need to run SimCity 4 on a Windows Computer?
You will need a PC with either Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP or Vista, running at least a 500MHz CPU (any computer made in the past 5 years will meet this requirement).
What do I need to run SimCity 4 on a Macintosh Computer?
You will need a Macintosh that has at least the 10.2 operating system installed (Version 10.2.8) and at least a PowerPC G4 or any Intel-based Mac.
How can I get additional copies of Sim City 4?
In addition to the copies provided by the Future City competition, additional copies (for the PC only) can be obtained through the National Future City Competition Website.
Where are my cities being saved to?
On the PC, your cities and the regions they are in are stored in the user’s My Documents folder, under Sim City 4\Regions. On the Mac, they are stored in the user’s Documents folder, under Sim City 4\Regions.
