Just how big is GTA V anyways?

[Eunos_Cosmo]

I know video games operate on a pretty healthy suspension of disbelief, and this post might be against that spirit, but I wanted to see how big GTA V actually was. If the map is meant to represent all of Southern California plus Los Angeles, why not compare it to the real deal? So I did this based on a pretty reasonable consensus that the game's island is about 6 miles long.

First, general Southern California region including San Diego

Second, the city of Los Angeles:

And third and possibly most painfully, a map of Hollywood & Beverly Hills

Yep, Hollywood is probably close to 1.5x the size of GTA V's rendition of Los Santos and all of San Andreas could easily fit between Redondo Beach and Marina Del Ray. Sunset boulevard is longer than the entire GTA V map. I guess that's why fighter jets top out at 140mph in the game.

California is a big place.

Edit: The desert is about the size of the LA Country Club

I won't put a picture up, but the Alamo Sea is based on the Salton Sea. Well, the entire San Andreas map could fit in the Salton Sea probably 25 times, to say nothing of the Alamo Sea itself.

 

[TexRex]

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

6 years of Architecture school means I'm really, really good at scaling things.

 

[Sage Ages]

It's worth noting that the actual in-game map is scaled down by about half of what it would be (assuming the map is constructed the same way as it was in IV). Everything moves at half speed in-game.

 

[JR98]

I'm quite happy with the size of the map. Would you prefer it to take 5 minutes to get from Paleto Bay to LS or 5 hours?

 

[Vince]

I'm quite happy with the size of the map. Would you prefer it to take 5 minutes to get from Paleto Bay to LS or 5 hours?

It would be pretty interesting if it took longer than five minutes. Possibly 15 or 25 minutes to get from the city to Paleto Bay. Of course, five hours is just silly!
I think more people would like this idea if the game was more flexible for people to choose where they want to spawn. Instead of either where they last were, a random location, or in one of their apartments, there should be eight or ten various zones if a map ever happens to become that large.
Besides, I like taking long 'road trips' with friends on GTA anyway.

 

[JR98]

It would be pretty interesting if it took longer than five minutes. Possibly 15 or 25 minutes to get from the city to Paleto Bay. Of course, five hours is just silly!
I think more people would like this idea if the game was more flexible for people to choose where they want to spawn. Instead of either where they last were, a random location, or in one of their apartments, there should be eight or ten various zones if a map ever happens to become that large.
Besides, I like taking long 'road trips' with friends on GTA anyway.

I hate that random locations sometimes (quite a lot for me) puts you in the wilderness. On a mountain or on a cliff or somewhere where it takes ages to get to a road to get your car. I'm happy with the size of the map.

 

[CAMAROBOY69]

I'm quite happy with the size of the map. Would you prefer it to take 5 minutes to get from Paleto Bay to LS or 5 hours?

I am also happy with the overall size of GTA5. Especially since its full of so much life. Would have been even happier if there were animals online. But overall, extremely happy with GTA5. Easily the best of the entire series IMO. Still overwhelming how much there is to do in this game.

 

[Vince]

I hate that random locations sometimes (quite a lot for me) puts you in the wilderness. On a mountain or on a cliff or somewhere where it takes ages to get to a road to get your car.

Yeah, I understand how that can be annoying.
I'm just a super casual player, I guess. I don't mind a longish walk to my car that much!

 

[JR98]

I am also happy with the overall size of GTA5. Especially since its full of so much life. Would have been even happier if there were animals online. But overall, extremely happy with GTA5. Easily the best of the entire series IMO. Still overwhelming how much there is to do in this game.

And the detail is just immense. Especially in the PS4/PC version.

Yeah, I understand how that can be annoying.
I'm just a super casual player, I guess. I don't mind a longish walk to my car that much!

I don't mind walking that much either (considering most of the game is driving) but 5 minutes running just for the nearest car is too much/

 

[Carlos]

Thanks for making this

 

[Marcus Garvey]

The larger the map, the better; to me. I wouldn't mind it taking 45 minutes or more to cross the desert by car. It would also allow a more accurate representation of the speed differentials of the various vehicles in the game. For example, allowing the Jets to be more than a little faster than a top level Super class car in the game. I've spent a lot of time studying the map and the real life locations that are represented, and while I wouldn't expect it be able to be rendered in true scale, I wouldn't mind a much larger map at all. In fact, I often travel in the slower planes, boats, and by bicycle when in town as I feel it affords me a better opportunity to enjoy the details built into the city. It's not supposed to take less than 2 minutes to get to Malibu from the Vincent Thomas Bridge.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

I didn't mean to suggest I think GTA V is too small, I was just interested in seeing how big it was in relation to the real Southern California. For those that haven't been, California is really, really big. And LA is also quite vast. It's also interesting to note that the Hollywood hills are about the same scale as Mount Chilliad in GTA V. Mount Lee, the mountain with the Hollywood sign is about 2/3 the size of Chilliad, and some of them are actually larger. When you are driving on Mulholland Drive, you feel very, very high up.

Did another, this time with NYC vs Liberty City with all of the boroughs color coded the same.

Central Park & Algonquin from GTA IV:

To be fair, Central Park is simply monstrous.

I think this thread is somewhat timely. While it is very difficult to get a realistic sense of scale on a flat 2d projection, VR is gaining quite a lot of ground lately. I would be curious to see how the sense of scale would change if you could perceive depth in GTA V. This is something that Rockstar might be thinking about for future GTA games. The more immersive a game is, the more it strains the suspension of disbelief. It's going to have to get bigger and more detailed if VR is introduced, and I wonder if algorithmic world building with real time parametric rendering is going to be the future. That is to say, like a vector drawing, a building (for example) isn't a pre-modeled form but a set of mathematical instructions that your computer builds in real time. That sounds really complicated/difficult, but I have a decent amount of experience with parametric architecture, and I don't think it's out of the question. The file size would be comparatively smaller, but you would need quite a bit more memory. But chips keep getting faster and ram keeps getting bigger/cheaper....

(edit to illustrate this last point, I'll give an example of my thesis project. Part of involved transcribing a 434 line poem into a piece of architecture. As an instruction set in grasshopper, the "code", despite being quite complicated, was about 50kb file size. The model that code produced was more than 3gb.)

 

[Sage Ages]

I hate that random locations sometimes (quite a lot for me) puts you in the wilderness. On a mountain or on a cliff or somewhere where it takes ages to get to a road to get your car. I'm happy with the size of the map.

Then set your game so you spawn at your previous location.