VISSIM is a multi-modal microscopic traffic flow simulation software purposely developed by Planung Transport Verkehr AG (PTV AG) in Karksruhe, Germany and the named VISSIM resulting from the German “Verkehr In Städten - SIMulationsmodell” or “Traffic in cities - simulation model” in English. VISSIM offers much more flexibility than the other contenders because of its ability to model unusual sites, for example railroad crossings, as well as providing powerful 3-D and movie capture, in 3D mode only.
AIMSUN is a microscopic simulation model based in car-following, lane changing and gap acceptance algorithms. Using its mesoscopic option, large model covering many intersection or corridors, can be less restrictive in terms of modelling and calibration.
CORSIM is one of the most common used micro-simulation programs in the USA for modelling vehicle traffic operations. CORSIM specialises in simulation of freeways and highways vehicular traffic issues.
I just have a minor comment if you decide to go for VISSIM: You should check the range spatial range of your study with the license. Normally it may include only 10km if you don't have the commercial licesne.
one more thing: Car-following behaviour in VISSIM is based on Viedemann's model and Aimsun is based on Gipps model. If I were to choose between the models, , I, personally, would go for Gipps!
It depends on the type and the scale of project/ research that you need for. Since you have to decide whether you need Macroscopic or Microscopic traffic simulation first.
In general Synchro and VISSIM are the most advance software in traffic engineering. But, if you need to model unusual sites, like Turbo or Flyover roundabouts, I strongly encourage you to use VISSIM software!
I believe that Aimsun and Vissim are the more advanced packages. Problem is that they are quite expensive. Free alternatives at the moment are Sumo (which I never used) and Tritone.
Tritone is developed by my team at Università della Calabria and, apart from the fact that we offer it for free, it has some distinctive features such as safety performance evaluation and the choice of the car-following model:
Check out MATSim (Multi-Agent Transport Simulation: https://matsim.org/)
"MATSim provides a framework to implement large-scale agent-based transport simulations. The framework consists of severel modules which can be combined or used stand-alone. Modules can be replaced by custom implementations to test single aspects of your own work.
Currently, MATSim offers a framework for demand-modeling, agent-based mobility-simulation (traffic flow simulation), re-planning, a controler to iteratively run simulations as well as methods to analyze the output generated by the modules."
I would go for PTV-VISSIM. It is not an open source, so you have to pay for it, but the good thing, if you are doing research at an accredited university, you can seek PTV for getting a student license version for free. This license, will provide you with most of the basic features on, however you will be forced to use network with limited size. For most research applications, these license would be sufficient. Another very good feature of VISSIM is the RBC module for modeling traffic signals. In my opinion, the best thing about VISSIM is the VISSIM-COM interface which allows you with little knowledge in python, Matlab or visual studio to apply custom scenarios and interfere in the simulation and change parameters while running. Please let me know if you are to use VISSIM. I can guide you to some groups that are supporting vissim users with their rising simulation problems.
While "Traffic Simulation" encompasses a range of tools, the first thing that comes to mind when asking most traffic experts about traffic simulation is microscopic traffic simulation. The most widely used commercial microscopic traffic simulation tools are VISSIM and AIMSUN. Researchers tend to prefer SUMO, which is open source (because it is open source). SUMO will not come with all the bells and whistles that VISSIM and AIMSUN do (traffic engineering related bells and whistles). That said, both of these commercial tools are underwhelming from a computational software tool perspective: They both only run on Windows OS and neither scales to multiple cores/processors/threads if you wish to run heavy simulation jobs.
The answer could be a bit complicated. It depends on the level of details you are aiming to and the facility you want to analyze. VISSIM is multi-modal micro-simulation traffic flow software based on car following and lane change models developed by Wiedemann. VISSIM can perfectly model freeways, signalized intersections, and unsignalized intersections as well. However, the calibration process could be time consuming and you need to tweak several parameters. It needs a lot of experience to get the job done right.
If you would do micro-simulation, I would suggest VISSIM unless you do not master it. Otherwise, go with Corsim or SimTraffic.
For macro-simulation modelling, you can use either Synchro, except for roundabouts, or use Sidra Intersection.
Transmodeler definitely! (fully integrated GIS as a bonus, in addition to 2D/3D integration; macro-meso-micro simulations under one platform; driver/car behavior; emissions modeling; road elevation; only GIS platform that handles matrices; GIS integrated CAD road editor; macro builder; C++/python etc support; dynamic tables i.e., tables change with map dynamics real time; connected cars; 1-5 autonomous vehicle settings; pedestrian modeling etc.) ... www.transmodeler.com
Along with TransCAD (both software from Caliper corporation) you can not only simulate but develop the most powerful GIS based trip estimation from the largest variety of planning models ... just a few standard deviations above competitors ...