Relative sizes of LC, VC, and SA

  • Thread starter Thread starter Spuds725
  • 25 comments
  • 1,547 views
wow first time i got a scaled visual comparison. San andreas is huge. Cant wait to see how big the next GTA map would be :sick:
 
Great stuff, thanks for pointing that out.

I was sort of hoping (from the filename) that they would be scaled against the USA itself as well. But, that's probably kind of silly, even all of SA is still a tiny fraction of the size of any one city it's supposed to represent.

So, what's everyone expecting from the next installment, geography wise?
Will they go back to having one city, and just make it incredibly massive; or will they stay with the multi-city concept and just scale it up?
I'm hoping for multiple cities again, with even more countryside in between. I think wandering the backroads and offroading through the forests of San Andreas is something that gives it replay value above all the previous games in the series.
 
SA geography drives me batty---not all of it but the area North of LS and south of SF-- seems like it takes forever to get anywhere and you have to keep pausing to see where you are at... I absolutely hate driving to Angel Pine---

I started a new game recently and decided not to mess around and just see how fast I can get though the story-- I did do some unique jumps for money early on so I could buy a safe house near OG Locs missions.

I don't mind most of the Map-- just the SW corner-- nothing there but the game makes you go back a few times.

I was interested in how the relative city sizes related though-- and it looks (to me) to be about right....
 
Nice find. I would never think that San Andreas is so big. Just looking at GTA3's map makes me cry and laugh, it's so small. VC isn't big either.


Spuds725
SA geography drives me batty---not all of it but the area North of LS and south of SF-- seems like it takes forever to get anywhere and you have to keep pausing to see where you are at... I absolutely hate driving to Angel Pine---

I started a new game recently and decided not to mess around and just see how fast I can get though the story-- I did do some unique jumps for money early on so I could buy a safe house near OG Locs missions.

I don't mind most of the Map-- just the SW corner-- nothing there but the game makes you go back a few times.

I was interested in how the relative city sizes related though-- and it looks (to me) to be about right....
Click to expand...
I have a hard time as well finding places in Badlands, otherwise I can find most of the places without the map.
 
Is it really that tricky? I guess I just always know where I'm going because I've spent so much time wandering around out there.
 
Same here, I don't even have the little map in the corner anymore, except when I want to run some taxi fares. I will agree that the Flint County area is kind of annoying in its design, driving from SF to LS or vice versa can be a pain, unless you're good with a speed bike.
 
San Andreas is huge... maybe I should start playing GTA again... I used to love driving around Vice City for the heck of it... hell, it's one of the only reasons I played GTA.
 
One of the things that makes SA so awesome IMO is the huge size compared to VC. I hope GTA4 has a map which dwarfs SA, regardless of whether it`s one big city or some smaller cities with countryside in between. When it comes to GTA, size matters.
 
GrandpaLonghair
One of the things that makes SA so awesome IMO is the huge size compared to VC. I hope GTA4 has a map which dwarfs SA, regardless of whether it`s one big city or some smaller cities with countryside in between. When it comes to GTA, size matters.
Click to expand...

Agreed, i want at least the same size, no smaller.
 
You should be able to sit on the highways for hours, just like in real life. ;)

Seriously, though, nice find Spuds! 👍 It’s interesting to finally see a visual comparison of the size of the 3 maps.
 
Interesting pic, I remember when Vice city was coming rockstar would go on how much bigger VC was over LC. Doesnt look a great deal bigger, but SA.... now thats a difference.
 
VIPERGTSR01
Interesting pic, I remember when Vice city was coming rockstar would go on how much bigger VC was over LC. Doesnt look a great deal bigger, but SA.... now thats a difference.
Click to expand...

I agree-- I played VC first and I thought LC felt as big as VC--- VC wasted alot of land --- beaches and Golf Course.... it was there but not really used...and took up alot of land.
 
Spuds725
I don't mind most of the Map-- just the SW corner-- nothing there but the game makes you go back a few times.
Click to expand...

Best place to do Ambulance though... Piece of piss if you make sure you avoid the police rangers!!

C.
 
Wow, I never relized that.

I thought GTA3 and Vice City were alot bigger than that..

I love the big maps though, You never run out of 'stupid' things to do :dopey: 👍
 
GrandpaLonghair
One of the things that makes SA so awesome IMO is the huge size compared to VC. I hope GTA4 has a map which dwarfs SA, regardless of whether it`s one big city or some smaller cities with countryside in between. When it comes to GTA, size matters.
Click to expand...

I totally agree with you! :)

Hope the next GTA will be like 4 times bigger than SA or even more..
 
I personally, I prefer quality over quantity. You can only wander around for so long befroe you just get bored, but if there's activities to do aside from races and those stupid arcade games, then it has huge replay value.

Plus it makes killing funner too.
 
I don't see a problem with it.

I would however find it very neat if they included a time-zone difference on different parts of the map!
 
I'm a wee bit skeptical of that map, simply because the simply says that he scaled each map by "several methods" and "believes" it is 99% accurate. Not that it's necessarily wrong, but is it just a coincidence that Vice City and Liberty City stacked on top of each other neatly fit into the height of San Andreas? And there's no description of how and why he used these "several methods" or scaling.

About the size of the next game....

Bear in mind that there's a limit to the kind of manpower and money that Rockstar would be willing to make a humungousl map for a game. Any returns are going to start dimishining as the game goes beyond a certain size. It takes a long while for a player to get used to something like San Andreas, and you'll just start turning off people if you overwhelm them with a game that takes 50 hours of gameplay just before you're not driving around totally lost.

With a combination of limited budget and time and trying to appeal to both GTA fans and newcomers to the series, I just don't think that we're going to be seeing a 50km x 50km game area crammed onto our PS3 discs. And just as well, I really don't want to drive for a half hour from my load point just to start the next mission and to spend a month with my paper map in front of me trying to figure out where the hell I am.

The whole hype about wanting some sort of absurdly large game for the next GTA is a bit overblown.

edit: I suppose the best way of comparing the 3 maps would be to pick a stretch of straight road in each game (the airport runways would be ideal because they're clearly marked on the maps found on the 'net) and maybe drive along it for a while and compare the difference between distance travelled at the start and end, and use that as some sort of calibration to scale the maps.


KM.
 
If one of us is bored, you can use the distance travelled stat to compare-- will be real ez in VC and SA (using a heli).... a little more difficult in III due to not being able to go in a straight line as easily--- although a few roads on SI are straight....

If you get a couple of points to match up you should be able to compare distances and use the number of pixels on the maps to compare relative sizes.... I have a image program that will tell me how many pixels a dimension is when I highlight an area for cropping..

Should at least be able to get a rough estimate of how accurate it is...
 
Good points by KM on the size of the next game 👍. But, I`d like to comment from my personal POV. I`m one who doesn`t buy the latest, greatest flavor of the week when it comes to video games. I tend to get a game & play it to death, providing of course that I like it. If the next GTA is umpteen times bigger than San An was, that`s fine with me. My goal isn`t to zip through a game ASAP, and then move on to the next one. I want the "ride" to last as long as possible and savor every moment. An absurdly large map allows me to keep finding "new" areas & things to do, just how I like it. Even now, I still find a road, area, alleyway or whatever that I never knew existed in SA. That Rules!
I`m curious to see how big a map R* uses on the GTA`s that are on PS3. Anything smaller than SA is a step backwards, IMO.
 

Similar threads

PRO_TOO
Grand Prix 4 - PC (2002)
Replies
4
Views
2K
PRO_TOO
PRO_TOO
Famine
Kazunori Yamauchi Discusses the Pros and Cons of PlayStation 5 and PC Development
2 3
Replies
63
Views
8K
ICEYOU3
ICEYOU3
Turnup
Triple, Trackir, parallax. Topic for cockpit builders.
Replies
0
Views
741
Turnup
Turnup
TT92
SA system explained for Consoles
Replies
0
Views
2K
TT92
TT92
Eunos_Cosmo
GTA San Andreas - A Coronavirus-Fueled Retrospective (And ~15 year anniversary playthrough)
Replies
2
Views
7K
Eunos_Cosmo
Eunos_Cosmo

Latest Posts

Back