A Gamer Spent 200 Hours Building an Incredibly Detailed Digital San Francisco

http://www.citylab.com/design/2016/10/san-francisco-cities-skylines-mod/505265/

by misnamed • 10 years ago

153 42 10 years ago

cstrat• 10 years ago

I wonder if the city is profitable if the map is loaded with the normal game mechanics. I suspect he wouldn't have strategically placed the municipal resources around the place.

Gargoyle• 10 years ago

I wonder if RL San Francisco is profitable loaded with normal government mechanics. :-)

concerned_user• 10 years ago

Response from the creator: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/593ei7/san_francisc...

"Traffic is ok, thanks to tram, cable car and BART. I play in sandbox mod (unlimited money mod on) because if not, it's impossible to build a city like this. It does not avoid to deal with services such as garbage and deathcare. I have huge deathwaves, and I had to hid my landfills because they are not existing in the area I built IRL."

jcoffland• 10 years ago

I'm surprised this only took 200 hours. Said gamer must have imported a large bit of the data automatically. Could be copyright issues with Google.

toxican• 10 years ago

There are mods for the game that let you easily import height maps. I want to say it's done from Open Street Map, but it's been a while since I've tried it out.

pjc502• 10 years ago

http://terrain.party/ (currently down): lets you turn freely available geodata into a PNG that the game accepts.

It doesn't handle the roads, that was almost certainly done by hand.

Pigo• 10 years ago

I was going to say, my brother has logged considerably more time than that on any version of Mass Effect.

RangerScience2• 10 years ago

A friend of mine works for a company doing something like this with vehicle-mounted scanners. It's like street view on crack - I want to say something like centimeter precision on the measurements, and then they skin it with the photos? It's pretty impressive.

This is also impressive, but for other reasons.

posterboy• 10 years ago

with radar and lidar equipped cars, these models will become a commodity quickly

hengheng• 10 years ago

Fixed wing drones can do the same, but it's hard to get the necessary permits. (In fact the data could even be merged with truck mounted lidar)

RangerScience2• 10 years ago

I know they merge with aerial scans, but I don't know if it's drone-based.

nerfhammer2• 10 years ago

How does the drone know its exact elevation? GPS is only accurate within like 10 meters

teh_klev• 10 years ago

Reddit thread where the individual who created this answers questions:

https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/593auz/san_fr...

lordnacho• 10 years ago

Can this kind of map be used for GTA? Would love to run around the famous cities of the world with a rocket launcher.

KON_Air• 10 years ago

Within AAA "cinematic expriiince" fetishism would prevent it, perhaps some indie-semi indie or GTA modders can do it. Also I'd love to see it cause main stream media to throw a fit over such a "terrorist training sim".

mxfh2• 10 years ago

Try Driver San Francisco, The Crew or historical L.A. Noire, these are somewhat more realistic than the GTA series in real world street network mimicry.

lfowles2• 10 years ago

Not SF, but I recall True Crime: Streets of LA using a true to life map of Los Angeles.

dsfyu404ed2• 10 years ago

You can get the rocket launcher as long as I get the Killdozer(TM).

cm2187• 10 years ago

The problem with realistic maps is that distances are much larger than a game map. With a lot of repetition of buildings that would get a bit boring.

But I am completely with you on looking for a new GTA5 map.

pella• 10 years ago

other data source:

OpenStreetMap : "San Francisco Building Height Import"

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Building_H...

ofcapl_• 10 years ago

wow! it reminds me a Microsoft game - Midtown Madness :)

pjc502• 10 years ago

Cities:Skylines is a great game for this kind of thing, because it has tremendous support for mods. It even has a built-in "asset editor" that lets you define buildings, maps and road junctions. All of which can then be shared on the Steam workshop.

You do need quite a few mods to remove restrictions on road and building placement, and then allow manual control of buildings rather than letting them "grow" according to the game mechanics.

dsfyu404ed2• 10 years ago

Coming soon: Fallout 6 $YourHometown

smaili• 10 years ago

Images - http://m.imgur.com/a/xzZoa

mkesper• 10 years ago

Some people also spend weeks and months in Minetest (this one fictitious): https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6642

abakker• 10 years ago

I've always wanted this kind of thing in Gran Turismo, or some other racing sim, just so that I could do my various commutes over time with no traffic and fast cars.

foobarian• 10 years ago

I wanted it so I can learn to drive around downtown Boston at my leisure and without stress of getting lost, finding parking, getting honked at, etc.

xkcd-sucks• 10 years ago

Just go out any time after 11pm...

mrspeaker• 10 years ago

This reminds of the first time I ever went to San Francisco from Australia. My hotel was near some famous tourist spot (oh, Pier 39 - it's mentioned in the post!). I went down to see what was there, and was struck by the most intense deja-vu I'd ever felt. This was my first time to the US, but for some reason I knew this place. It was like I had astral-projection traveled there or something crazy.

Walking around the pier I instinctively knew where everything was: store fronts, stairs... I knew that if I went down I would look out and see Alcatraz? Yep, there it was. And if I went left I'd see... sea lions?! I even said "sea lions?" out loud to myself. I'd never even seen a sea lion before, but yep, there they were!

I was freaking out until I turned around and saw a flight of stairs with a bright red hand rail and realised: Tony Hawk Pro Skater IV.

shasheene• 10 years ago

I've had the same incredibly intense deja-vu from walking through a certain building the first time at my university in South Australia, realizing soon after I had played a custom map/level of that same building years earlier in the Half Life 2 engine. One of the weirdest feelings...

I fully expect many such moments in San Francisco after so many hours of teenage youth spent playing GTA: San Andreas online! :)

jk4930• 10 years ago

There's something off. Someone used the Berlin Reichstag (parliament building) [1] as the model for the SF City Hall [2].

http://i.imgur.com/s2MmJ8B.jpg

[1] http://footage.framepool.com/shotimg/qf/252862096-reichstag-...

[2] http://www.aerialarchives.com/stock/img/AHLB3555.jpg

ryanmarsh• 10 years ago

Where are the homeless people and needle exchange signs?

neonbat2• 10 years ago

my question: if this takes '200 hours and 1 gamer' then what are people at AAA game studios even doing?

greggyb• 10 years ago

Building an incredibly powerful engine and flexible modding system to enable one person to do this in 200 hours....

neonbat2• 10 years ago

yeah i mean usually thats a fixed cost right? like is that actually a cost of AAA titles? do they make a new engine for every game? i dont think they do.

A Gamer Spent 200 Hours Building an Incredibly Detailed Digital San Francisco

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