Glass houses: SimCity’s GlassBox engine [Video]

EA and Maxis have released a trailer for the forthcoming SimCity, showing some of the functions of its ‘GlassBox’ engine. While the graphics are not indicative of the final release (no surprise there, since it’s due in 2013), the trailer does give a few ideas about how various buildings will function.
It seems you’ll have a fair amount of visual clues as to how well your buildings are doing their job (factories with either empty or full coal bunkers, for example). The cheerful voiceover man also explains ‘agents’, which are things like water, or moving vans, which carry resources or people to the zones and buildings in your city.
It’s fairly technical stuff, but you can decipher it for yourself below.
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