Mapping Los Santos! Building/landmark analysis

[lxr]

 

Please do that for RDR too. So we can figure out how big the map will be.

In case anyone ever does this, it's probably best to use the map linked here ("The West" / "detailed map" / "large map"). The boundary of the explorable territory is (relatively) unambiguous, but still, the hard part is to determine the exact scale (as I suspect the in-game map is made of 512x512px tiles, and each pixel may or may not represent exactly one square meter). But maybe the site owners or map authors have a clue. Otherwise, just assume Magic_Al's measurements are good enough. They probably are.

[kesta195]

the city is waaaay to small

Actually it's probably too big. That is larger than the city we have seen in the screenshots.

[F4t4l1ty]

Where is the border of explorable area in RDR? The red line or rather the green line? I don't own this game so it's difficult outline these borders for me.

 

Image:

http://i.imgur.com/CVy2IWo.jpg

 

[GtaVComments]

Yeah, seeing the city from screenshots, doesn't give an accurate estimation as to what it will be like when your playing the game, it will definitely feel bigger.

 

I think I remember R* saying in GI that Los Santos itself is bigger than LC. Anyone back me up on that?

[kesta195]

Yeah, seeing the city from screenshots, doesn't give an accurate estimation as to what it will be like when your playing the game, it will definitely feel bigger.

 

I think I remember R* saying in GI that Los Santos itself is bigger than LC. Anyone back me up on that?

That was from the IGN preview I think, but it is correct.

[Bonfy]

Where is the border of explorable area in RDR? The red line or rather the green line? I don't own this game so it's difficult outline these borders for me.

 

Image:

http://i.imgur.com/CVy2IWo.jpg

The green line, and where you see the railroad going into the mountain (you put some "?" there) it's the red line.

[lxr]

 

Where is the border of explorable area in RDR? The red line or rather the green line? I don't own this game so it's difficult outline these borders for me.

 

Image:

http://i.imgur.com/CVy2IWo.jpg

The green line, and where you see the railroad going into the mountain (you put some "?" there) it's the red line.

Not that it makes much of a difference, but I think it's relatively clear that the dotted (red) line is intended to mark the boundary of the territory (and that where it's missing, you should follow the visible rim). In the end, you're looking for the area considered to be explorable by the game and its developers, even if it may turn out that it's not 100% congruent with the factually explorable area.

Edited January 19, 2013 by lxr

[Choco Taco]

I think I remember R* saying in GI that Los Santos itself is bigger than LC. Anyone back me up on that?

The problem with that is they don't specify which areas they're including in the size comparison. Are they including the water in Liberty City? Is there an area of Los Santos to the southeast or northwest that they haven't shown?

[iiConTr0v3rSYx]

I think I remember R* saying in GI that Los Santos itself is bigger than LC. Anyone back me up on that?

The problem with that is they don't specify which areas they're including in the size comparison. Are they including the water in Liberty City? Is there an area of Los Santos to the southeast or northwest that they haven't shown?

Liberty City seemed big because of vast rivers that separated the islands, I guess you can say the same for RDR(in terms to only using horses the game felt huge). A third trailer is really needed in terms of determining how big the city of LS is(WE need to see South LS).

[lxr]

I think I remember R* saying in GI that Los Santos itself is bigger than LC. Anyone back me up on that?

The problem with that is they don't specify which areas they're including in the size comparison. Are they including the water in Liberty City? Is there an area of Los Santos to the southeast or northwest that they haven't shown?

And the problem continues, since even though we have, by now, very good numbers about the land mass of Liberty City... what does "including the water" mean? Probably not all of it, since technically, the map of GTA IV has the same size as GTA SA, 6 by 6 kilometers. I guess the most reasonable choice would be 5,500 by 4,000 meters, which is the size of the in-game map.

[iiConTr0v3rSYx]

 

I think I remember R* saying in GI that Los Santos itself is bigger than LC. Anyone back me up on that?

The problem with that is they don't specify which areas they're including in the size comparison. Are they including the water in Liberty City? Is there an area of Los Santos to the southeast or northwest that they haven't shown?

And the problem continues, since even though we have, by now, very good numbers about the land mass of Liberty City... what does "including the water" mean? Probably not all of it, since technically, the map of GTA IV has the same size as GTA SA, 6 by 6 kilometers. I guess the most reasonable choice would be 5,500 by 4,000 meters, which is the size of the in-game map.

So what was that map on the last page all about? I was under the impression that with, or without water, LC was still smaller than SA..... I'm getting all confused by all of this .

[lxr]

I think I remember R* saying in GI that Los Santos itself is bigger than LC. Anyone back me up on that?

The problem with that is they don't specify which areas they're including in the size comparison. Are they including the water in Liberty City? Is there an area of Los Santos to the southeast or northwest that they haven't shown?

And the problem continues, since even though we have, by now, very good numbers about the land mass of Liberty City... what does "including the water" mean? Probably not all of it, since technically, the map of GTA IV has the same size as GTA SA, 6 by 6 kilometers. I guess the most reasonable choice would be 5,500 by 4,000 meters, which is the size of the in-game map.

So what was that map on the last page all about? I was under the impression that with, or without water, LC was still smaller than SA..... I'm getting all confused by all of this .

Just saying that if someone claims "LC with water = SA", then, in a purely technical sense, that may actually be true. So if you're talking about "LC with water", you'll have to decide with how much water.

[Fail_At_GTA]

I think I remember R* saying in GI that Los Santos itself is bigger than LC. Anyone back me up on that?

The problem with that is they don't specify which areas they're including in the size comparison. Are they including the water in Liberty City? Is there an area of Los Santos to the southeast or northwest that they haven't shown?

And the problem continues, since even though we have, by now, very good numbers about the land mass of Liberty City... what does "including the water" mean? Probably not all of it, since technically, the map of GTA IV has the same size as GTA SA, 6 by 6 kilometers. I guess the most reasonable choice would be 5,500 by 4,000 meters, which is the size of the in-game map.

So what was that map on the last page all about? I was under the impression that with, or without water, LC was still smaller than SA..... I'm getting all confused by all of this .

Just saying that if someone claims "LC with water = SA", then, in a purely technical sense, that may actually be true. So if you're talking about "LC with water", you'll have to decide with how much water.

Yeah, you do have a point. GTA IV can be bigger than Just Cause 2 because of the infinite ocean. However, a box surrounding the city and nothing extra is all the water I would say is included in the city.

[lxr]

As by now I guess I can feel for all those in this thread who are more into images than into numbers, here are my top three reasons why I think this onslaught of calculations won't go on forever:

 

- As far as I can see, there is only one, simple goal: to make an estimate of the GTA V map size that is slightly better than all the previous ones. And in principle, that's easy: it's 3.5 times RDR, or 5 times RDR with water. So all we have to figure out is how big RDR is.

 

- The only reason to care about all the rest ("SA + IV + RDR + room to spare", "about 5 x IV") is that it can tell us if "3.5 x RDR" and "5 x RDR" refers to the explorable area of RDR, or to the full map. But for that, we won't need super accurate numbers for SA or IV (and the answer is more or less certain anyway: RDR means explorable).

 

- Whatever the result is, it won't be precise. And we won't be able to make it any better, since we can't assume more than "maybe 3.4 to 3.6 times RDR, or maybe 4.8 to 5.2 times RDR with water". (But of course, it helps to have a relatively precise idea of how imprecise something is.)

Edited January 19, 2013 by lxr

[Raavi]

This thread is much much more in depth than the old LC ever was.

[Magic_Al]

Back to GTAIV:  To shrink the cropped-to-land full-size 5320x3368 radar map image to be 1 meter/pixel by F4t4l1ty's measurement, it must be scaled to 94.5% its size.

 

Assuming the RDR radar map is the same scale as the GTAIV radar map, I have now shrunk it to 94.5% of its size. This makes the Armadillo train platform be.... get ready.... 40.5 pixels long.  133 feet is.... 40.5 meters.  NAILED IT!!!

Ok, so since today seems to be the day of precise numbers... the GTA IV in-game radar map is 6,144 by 6,144 pixels for 6,000 by 6,000 meters, which means you have to shrink it to 0.9765625% (Properly scaled version here.)

 

Edit: Ah, and it gets even better! It's still not safe to assume that the RDR in-game map has the same scale, just that, most likely, the lengths of its edges are both multiples of 512

Thank you! The need to have 512x512 tiles answers the question bothering me of why these radar maps are close to 1-meter resolution but maddeningly aren't quite. So that's why.

 

Obviously the 7500x5500 RDR radar, assuming that was made from the full-size tiles, needs something added to be divisible by 512x512 tiles. Would its uncropped size be 7680x7680 (15x15 tiles) with more empty space around it like the uncropped GTAIV radar? 7500 happens to be 97.65625% of 7680, so increasing the X-axis of the radar to be divisible by 512 just happens to be exactly the same size difference between the GTAIV radar and 1-meter resolution. Does that make it more likely the RDR radar is the same scale as the GTAIV radar, or does it mean it's already 1-meter resolution. From my measurements, I think the radar image does need to shrink slightly to be 1-meter resolution.

 

I don't know if it means anything that the intended boundaries of gameplay in RDR seem to fit within 6000x4500 units while the scenery visible from there goes on a ways. The radar image probably doesn't show the true extent of that scenery.

[lxr]

 

Back to GTAIV:  To shrink the cropped-to-land full-size 5320x3368 radar map image to be 1 meter/pixel by F4t4l1ty's measurement, it must be scaled to 94.5% its size.

 

Assuming the RDR radar map is the same scale as the GTAIV radar map, I have now shrunk it to 94.5% of its size. This makes the Armadillo train platform be.... get ready.... 40.5 pixels long.  133 feet is.... 40.5 meters.  NAILED IT!!!

Ok, so since today seems to be the day of precise numbers... the GTA IV in-game radar map is 6,144 by 6,144 pixels for 6,000 by 6,000 meters, which means you have to shrink it to 0.9765625% (Properly scaled version here.)

 

Edit: Ah, and it gets even better! It's still not safe to assume that the RDR in-game map has the same scale, just that, most likely, the lengths of its edges are both multiples of 512

Thank you! The need to have 512x512 tiles answers the question bothering me of why these radar maps are close to 1-meter resolution but maddeningly aren't quite. So that's why.

Yes, I remember I was puzzled too, until I realized this. Especially since the error is so small that it looks like something else is slightly wrong.

 

Can't say how exactly that RDR map was produced, but given the in-game measurements you've made, I think you're right, and the full map may be 7,680 by 5,632 meters.

Edited January 19, 2013 by lxr

[F4t4l1ty]

So, here's outlined RDR world with "7088px" scale. It's the width of 7500x5500px RDR map scaled in CAD to 7088x5197 (meters). Now I can scale it as you want. Just give me some other number instead of 7088 if you think it's too small/big.

 

Explorable area is about 40% (river included)

 

 

 

[lxr]

 

So, here's outlined RDR world with "7088px" scale. It's the width of 7500x5500px RDR map scaled in CAD to 7088x5197 (meters). Now I can scale it as you want. Just give me some other number instead of 7088 if you think it's too small/big.

 

Explorable area is about 40% (river included)

 

I'd give you 7,680, but it doesn't even matter so much. It's the 40% that I find surprising. Even if you used the dotted line, it looks like that would add less than 1%.

 

It's a slightly worrying result, if you look at the rest of what we know. And I don't mean "did we just lose 1/3 of the map?", but rather "does this make sense at all?"...

[Magic_Al]

 

So, here's outlined RDR world with "7088px" scale. It's the width of 7500x5500px RDR map scaled in CAD to 7088x5197 (meters). Now I can scale it as you want. Just give me some other number instead of 7088 if you think it's too small/big.

 

Explorable area is about 40% (river included)

 

Cool! The best size would be to assume Rockstar built this the same as GTAIV and scale it to 97.65625% of 7500. I strongly believe this is correct.....

 

My initial scale calculation of the 7500px radar was 3.21391 pixels per foot (not accurate to that precision) based on an average of measurements of a walk down the middle north-south street in Blackwater that was 0.07 miles from the gazebo steps to the far side of the 4-way intersection. If the radar image was 1-meter scale it would be 3.28084 pixels per foot. 3.21391 is 97.96% of 3.28084. That's about the same as the difference between the GTAIV radar resolution and 1-meter resolution, consistent with the RDR and GTAIV radars being the same scale.

 

Supporting the correctness of this size, looking up my in-game measurements and testing them against the RDR radar shrunk to 7324 wide, and calling this 1 meter per pixel, things match pretty darn well. The Armadillo train platform should be 40.5 pixels long and it's 40 solid pixels plus two faded pixels at the edges. The 0.07 mile distance I walked in Blackwater should be 113 pixels on the map; it is.

 

So I think if you use the 97.65625% of 7500 size and give us some area measurements, that'll be about right!

[RockStarNiko]

Hi. I created these maps in vector CAD program. I used traniers to find out ingame coordinates and find out coordinates of most western and most eastern points on the map (you can see it in some images). Then it's easy put image into the program and resize it correctly. Islands are basically traced(outlined?) 2D polygons and I can determine their area. Maybe it's useful for someone

 

IMAGES:

A is area (km^2)

P is perimeter (km)

 

LC:

not in scale with SA image!!!

 

SA:

not in scale with LC image!!!

 

SA + LC in scale:

 

Links to other images:

 

How accurate outline is:

http://i.imgur.com/cmSq5.png

http://i.imgur.com/7Mxad.jpg

 

Areas as squares, rectangles... These are IN SCALE

Green square means whole area, blue square/rectangle (they have the same area) means land area.

 

http://i.imgur.com/IF9HX.png

http://i.imgur.com/F3ahN.png

 

NUMBERS: (easy to copy and paste )

 

IV [km^2]:

land area:

2,396067593

0,812829107

0,113625854

0,085870403

2,590697386

2,275042850

0,0770387288

_______________

sum=8,35117192

 

whole area:

16,926357

 

---------------

 

SA [km^2]:

land area:

10,89199658

1,794137002

6,491151755

6,929379868

0,106944812

2,475209007

______________

sum=28,688819

 

whole area:

35,701523

 

---------------

 

LC+SA [km^2]:

 

52,62788

This is the best and most accurate comparison of map sizes I seen.

 

I just wish you had RDR so you could have worked out the definitive size of that map too.

 

 

A few weeks back I did a map size comparison thread for GTA IV, SA and RDR.

 

If anyone is interested in reading it, check my signature

 

Maybe can get some kind of idea of how big RDR map size by comparing my results with these definitive results

 

 

ps BUY RDR!!!

 

 

[Choco Taco]

I just did a rough calculation and if you draw a box around the playable area of RDR, it's about 10 square miles. If you remove the unreachable areas from that box, it's about 6.5 square miles of actual playing surface. Is that right?

[F4t4l1ty]

 

I just did a rough calculation and if you draw a box around the playable area of RDR, it's about 10 square miles.  If you remove the unreachable areas from that box, it's about 6.5 square miles of actual playing surface.  Is that right?

These values come from 94.5% of 7500 px image (7088px). Should be not so difficult convert to 97.65625%. (for example: 13.1906*(7324.218px/7088px)^2=14.0844 square kilometers. (7500*0.9765625=7324.218px)

 

[Magic_Al]

 

I just did a rough calculation and if you draw a box around the playable area of RDR, it's about 10 square miles.  If you remove the unreachable areas from that box, it's about 6.5 square miles of actual playing surface.   Is that right?

Pretty much. I get 10.8 square miles for a box around dotted boundary line on the radar (which extends over water) and about 5.9 square miles for the play area.

 

EDIT: I guess it's even smaller with F4t4l1ty's better tracing. I think the larger of the two scales is correct so I'd multiply all his results by 1.06791446, so 5.7 square miles including the river.

 

EDIT 2: With F4t4l1ty's numbers from the other maps, the explorable land area of GTASA+GTAIV+RDR would be 19.74 square miles

Edited January 20, 2013 by Magic_Al

[Fail_At_GTA]

I just did a rough calculation and if you draw a box around the playable area of RDR, it's about 10 square miles.  If you remove the unreachable areas from that box, it's about 6.5 square miles of actual playing surface.   Is that right?

Pretty much. I get 10.8 square miles for a box around dotted boundary line on the radar (which extends over water) and about 5.9 square miles for the play area.

 

EDIT: I guess it's even smaller with F4t4l1ty's better tracing. I think the larger of the two scales is correct so I'd multiply all his results by 1.06791446, so 5.7 square miles including the river.

 

EDIT 2: With F4t4l1ty's numbers from the other maps, the explorable land area of GTASA+GTAIV+RDR would be 19.74 square miles

3.5x RDR is 19.95sq miles so thats about the same.

[Chunky P]

How big was the map from L A Noire by the way?

[_FgF_]

Hi. I created these maps in vector CAD program. I used traniers to find out ingame coordinates and find out coordinates of most western and most eastern points on the map (you can see it in some images). Then it's easy put image into the program and resize it correctly. Islands are basically traced(outlined?) 2D polygons and I can determine their area. Maybe it's useful for someone

 

IMAGES:

A is area (km^2)

P is perimeter (km)

 

LC:

not in scale with SA image!!!

 

SA:

not in scale with LC image!!!

 

SA + LC in scale:

 

Links to other images:

 

How accurate outline is:

http://i.imgur.com/cmSq5.png

http://i.imgur.com/7Mxad.jpg

 

Areas as squares, rectangles... These are IN SCALE

Green square means whole area, blue square/rectangle (they have the same area) means land area.

 

http://i.imgur.com/IF9HX.png

http://i.imgur.com/F3ahN.png

 

NUMBERS: (easy to copy and paste )

 

IV [km^2]:

land area:

2,396067593

0,812829107

0,113625854

0,085870403

2,590697386

2,275042850

0,0770387288

_______________

sum=8,35117192

 

whole area:

16,926357

 

---------------

 

SA [km^2]:

land area:

10,89199658

1,794137002

6,491151755

6,929379868

0,106944812

2,475209007

______________

sum=28,688819

 

whole area:

35,701523

 

---------------

 

LC+SA [km^2]:

 

52,62788

very accurate.

IMPOSSIBRU

[lxr]

 

I get 10.8 square miles for a box around dotted boundary line on the radar (which extends over water) and about 5.9 square miles for the play area.

 

EDIT: I guess it's even smaller with F4t4l1ty's better tracing. I think the larger of the two scales is correct so I'd multiply all his results by 1.06791446, so 5.7 square miles including the river.

 

EDIT 2: With F4t4l1ty's numbers from the other maps, the explorable land area of GTASA+GTAIV+RDR would be 19.74 square miles

So if I take all these recent numbers (rounding up the land/explorable percentages a tiny bit, as our outlines may already be slightly over-accurate), I get something like:

 

 

SA = 6 x 6 km = 36 km2 (~80% land = ~28.8 km2)

IV = 5.5 x 4 km = 22 km2 (~40% land = ~8.8 km2)

RDR = 7.5 x 5.5 km = 41.25 km2 (~40% explorable = ~16.5 km2)

 

Quote 1:

 

V land = 3.5 x RDR = 144.375 km2 (or ~57.75 km2)

V total = 5 x RDR = 206.25 km2 (or ~82.5 km2)

 

Quote 2:

 

V = SA + IV + RDR + X = 99.25 km2 + X (or ~54.1 km2 + X)

 

The only reasonable value for X would be ~3.65 km2

 

Quote 3:

 

V = 5 x IV = 110 km2 (or ~44 km2)

 

The best explanation would be that "5 x" was a bit vague, and should have been more like "6.5 x".

 

Conclusion:

 

Assuming "maybe 3.4 to 3.6 times RDR" and "maybe 4.8 to 5.2 times RDR", we get:

 

V land between 56 and 60 km2

V total between 79 and 86 km2 (for example 9 x 9 km)

 

 

So far, only gtamodeller has made a serious attempt at estimating the size of the Los Santos city area, based on his model. Given the above numbers, the map would look roughly like the one below (10m/px). I don't think it's totally impossible, but definitely somewhat unlikely.

 

So where can we make adjustments? Very hard to say, since there are so many potential explanations. Gtamodeller could be a bit off, R* could have been more vague than we expected (or referring to something other than "full map" or "explorable area"), and we may still be overlooking something (unexplorable underwater, unexpected interiors, etc). As of now, I don't really see how we could possibly conclude that one of these options is more likely than any of the others.

 

Edited January 20, 2013 by lxr

[Bonfy]

So far, only gtamodeller has made a serious attempt at estimating the size of the Los Santos city area, based on his model. Given the above numbers, the map would look roughly like the one below (10m/px). I don't think it's totally impossible, but definitely somewhat unlikely.

 

Hi, I'm following the great job you guys are doing. First of all grats for the effort you all are putting in it. Now to the question

 

Why you're saying that it's unlikely that the map will have that size? Just curious. It looks just fine to me.

[LotusRIP]

How about we not jump to mathematics and formulas until we know exactly what the map looks like and can make an accurate comparison. You're comparing maps to something we haven't even seen.