A traffic helicopter over a jammed freeway network gone mad: 348 lanes, six interchanges, express viaducts and four diagonal freeways high over everything. Everything moves smoothly: the helicopter eases into and out of every move, and lanes ease up to speed and down to a stop. Your 8 northbound lanes are bumper to bumper; nobody changes lanes, and each lane moves at its own speed (knobs 1–8). Around them: the southbound side, ramp lanes running between interchanges, three cross freeways and, 1.7 km west, a parallel freeway. Below you is suburbia (from the suburb photos); three diagonal freeways cross everything on overpasses, at angles, with no ramps. Every 3.2 km there is a freeway-to-freeway interchange — a cloverleaf (south), a six-level stack (middle) and a cloverstack (north) — and every ramp carries its own lane of jammed traffic. Next ▸ flies you to the next one. The roads are fixed; only the traffic moves. Cars are your top-down car photos (SUVs, vans, pickups, sports cars, station wagons, a sedan and an electric coupé), each repainted in a realistic colour.
| Button | Key | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Reset | Backspace | timer to 0, traffic back to the start, helicopter home (lane settings stay) |
| Forward ▶ / Pause ❚❚ | Enter / P (Space toggles) | run / freeze the traffic, the helicopter and the timer (the camera still moves) |
| ● Record | R | movie of the picture with sound, at the picture's real pixel size; press again to stop — the MP4 downloads |
| Lane − / + (8 lanes) | Ctrl+1…8 / Shift+1…8 | lane speed, 5 mph steps (knobs 1–8: 1 mph a click). Click a lane's number (or press 1–8) to stop / restart that lane |
| Stop all | X | every lane stops (press again: they all move off) |
| Mad | J | traffic gone mad (on at start): every lane, yours too, lurches between a dead stop and up to 2.6× its speed (90 mph at most) every 1.5–6 s, braking and accelerating hard. Off: the calm traffic of A5 |
| Auto | Z | your lanes stop and go by themselves, within the speeds you set |
| Higher / Lower | ↑ ↓ (wheel) | helicopter height, 50 ft to 15,000 ft |
| Tilt | T | straight down → 55° → 25° (see the traffic far ahead) → straight down |
| Follow | G | the helicopter flies at the average speed of your 8 lanes (on at start) |
| Hover / heli − + | 0 / - = | helicopter speed in mph (the X-TOUCH fader sets it 0–80) |
| Others − / + | , . | speed of all the other roads' traffic |
| Interchanges | N | the interchange network on (at start) / off (just the corridor and the parallel freeway) |
| ◂ Prev / Next ▸ | B / V | glide smoothly to the previous / next interchange, keeping your tilt and height (it climbs to 2,500 ft if you are below 1,500 ft); tilted, it stops far enough back that the interchange is in the middle of the picture. The helicopter then hovers |
| Approach ⇡ / Back ⇣ (hold) | W / S (Q E sideways, Shift = 3× faster) | fly toward what you are looking at (tilt first, then approach the interchange), easing in and out; faster when higher |
| Suburbs | U | the ground: suburbia tiled from your "suburb N.webp" photos (on at start) / the plain dark grid |
| Boxes | K | the A1–A6 wire boxes instead of the car photos |
| Lane colours | L | on: the cars in your 8 lanes are painted in their lane colours; off: ordinary colours like everyone else |
| Sound | M | road roar and rotor (off at start) |
| Info | I or H | show / hide the text in the corners of the picture (the information at the top left and the hints at the top right) |
| — | D | show / hide the buttons |
X-TOUCH MINI: knobs 1–8 = lane 1–8 speed (push = stop/go that lane), fader = helicopter speed, top row = Reset, Forward, Pause, Record, Higher, Lower, Tilt, Interchanges; bottom row = Stop all, Auto, Follow, Hover, Others −, Others +, Sound, D. LAYER A = Next interchange, LAYER B = text. Launchpad Mini: rows 1–2 = the same 16 buttons; rows 3–8 = a speed ladder per lane (column = lane, top row 60 mph … bottom row stop). nanoKEY2: see the MIDI panel. Right-click any on-screen button, then press a MIDI control, to assign it.
—
Right-click any button below the picture, then press the MIDI control you want for it (Esc cancels). Learned controls are kept in this browser
and shown in yellow; the defaults come from CT30.A7.Highways_midimap.js.