
A Gamer Spent 200 Hours Building an Incredibly Detailed Digital San Francisco - misnamed
http://www.citylab.com/design/2016/10/san-francisco-cities-skylines-mod/505265/
======
mrspeaker
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
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
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](http://i.imgur.com/s2MmJ8B.jpg)

[1]
[http://footage.framepool.com/shotimg/qf/252862096-reichstag-...](http://footage.framepool.com/shotimg/qf/252862096-reichstag-
dome-bundestag-norman-foster-tiergarten-district.jpg)

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

------
teh_klev
Reddit thread where the individual who created this answers questions:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/593auz/san_fr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/593auz/san_francisco_11_recreation_in_cities_skylines/)

------
pjc50
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.

------
RangerScience
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.

~~~
hengheng
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)

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

~~~
metalliqaz
Before 'drone' became a buzzword, they were just called remote-controlled
airplanes.

~~~
khedoros1
To me, "drone" has some different connotations. It usually seems to mean
either:

\- Ability to operate out of the pilot's line of sight (through streamed
cockpit video or autonomous operation)

\- A lazy term for a multi-rotor (3 or more) aircraft

------
abakker
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
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
Just go out any time after 11pm...

------
smaili
Images - [http://m.imgur.com/a/xzZoa](http://m.imgur.com/a/xzZoa)

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

~~~
mxfh
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.

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

~~~
mxfh
Totally forgot about _Test Drive Unlimited_ 's Oʻahu, mostly because I have no
idea how that island looks like in real life. And TDU2 had Ibiza as well (Yet
that game was somehow unbearable otherwise).

[https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/fvjnv/which_video_g...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/fvjnv/which_video_game_has_the_most_accurate_map_of_its/)

It's fan made game maps even work with google maps:
[https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=15SpJFVht9kXZ0yVMIz...](https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=15SpJFVht9kXZ0yVMIzywDnG9F14&hl=en)

~~~
lfowles
It's a shame Euro/American Truck Simulators didn't go for more accuracy :)
(Probably would have been on par with X-Plane install size however.)

------
cstrat
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.

~~~
concerned_user
Response from the creator:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/593ei7/san_francisc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/593ei7/san_francisco_11_recreation_with_cities_skylines/d95o15f/)

"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."

------
pella
other data source:

OpenStreetMap : "San Francisco Building Height Import"

[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Building_H...](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Building_Height_Import)

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

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

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

~~~
neonbat
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.

------
ryanmarsh
Where are the homeless people and needle exchange signs?

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

------
jcoffland
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
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.

~~~
pjc50
[http://terrain.party/](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.

~~~
maxerickson
In the reddit thread they say they took a screenshot of Google Maps and used
that to lay out the roads.

There is a mod to import OSM data though, I guess it isn't heavily maintained:

[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=41606...](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=416064574)

------
dsfyu404ed
Coming soon: Fallout 6 $YourHometown

