A Redditor of remarkable patience and determination has constructed their own, incredibly detailed digital replica of the city of San Francisco. Using a modified version of Cities: Skylines, the Redditor meticulously rebuilt such monuments as the Golden Gate Bridge, Lombard Street, Pier 39, and Colt Tower. It only took them 200 hours to build the virtual city—or five weeks of full-time employment, which is coincidentally how long it takes to find an apartment in the real San Francisco.
Said Redditor—who goes by the name “radiativeDoctor”—says the project was completed while simultaneously defending a Ph.D. Their photorealistic, eerily depopulated version of the “City By The Bay” was based on images from Google Maps. San Francisco, they contend, was a logical choice for this kind of project, because it’s “a city that will be well rendered by the game” due to its “famous emblem[s],” and the results are pretty convincing. They do, however, rue the fact that they “forgot a fucking wind turbine right in the middle of Presidio.”
The project tapped out when radiativeDoctor hit the maximum number of buildings the game would allow at once. And so it was that, once again, science was forced to catch up with the dreams of a gamer.
Technical specs for the project are available here, while this gallery contains large-scale, high-quality screenshots.
[via CityLab]