NYC vs. Grand Theft Auto IV's Liberty City
Boing Boing Gadgets' John Brownlee spotted this fantastic Flickr set comparing real photos of New York City with computer graphics from Grand Theft Auto IV's Liberty City. Link
Boing Boing Gadgets' John Brownlee spotted this fantastic Flickr set comparing real photos of New York City with computer graphics from Grand Theft Auto IV's Liberty City. Link
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Yanno, in the top two pics, I wasn't able to tell which building was the photo, and which was the render.
Top one is the Hearst building. I've eaten lunch there!
Rockstar really did just nail the atmosphere of this game. What a great job.
St. John the Divine, right?
Oh my god, I can shoot people in front of the building I have eaten and shopped in many times? I wonder if I can go across the street and shoot up the office building my dad works in...LOL
The in game shots actually look better than the real photos. I need to get this game.
This is just weird!
I played GTA4 for the first time about an hour ago, and was thinking exactly this: "I wish someone would do a shot for shot comparison of the landmarks.."
* wish granted *
Yay!
Thanks BB
One of the later comparisons in the series is a terrific example of Rockstar's "geographic sketch" of the city -- there's a row of adjacent high-rises in NYC that is reinterpreted with lookalikes of just the most recognizable ones.
In San Andreas, I remember one of the strangest experiences I had was recognizing Rockstar's version of a particular park in Los Angeles that I'd never so much as seen a photo of before -- I recognized it because I'd tricked all over a skate-ified version of it in one of the Tony Hawk games!
GTA4 owns reality.
B-B-B-But, but, but, those views are OWNED by the owners of those private buildings! Intellectual property lawyers and artists are all sitting down and crying right now! How dare you make them cry! (B&*++
Oops, my ASCII art arrow got mistaken for HTML. I meant to say the B&*++ was the sarcasm marker for those born without the sarcasm detection gene.
Is Lady Liberty holding a can of beer?!
It's pretty damn good. I wonder if the guy who took them knew what real life buildings they games ones were based on and deliberatly went out to take the pics, or if he just started noticing them and looked for similarities...
#11: I've flown around her in a helicopter, and it appears that it's a cup of coffee, the lid is just the right shape for a Starbucks lid. That's my take on it anyway. It most definitely not a torch.
GTA IV definitely has a surprising number of true-to-life details. The above pics and those at flickr are very Manhattan centric, but I've even found landmarks from my little Queens neighborhood in the game.
So do you go right to six stars if you shoot photos of the buildings?
Surprised I have to ask this, but do you have a link to the original person's flickr page who figured this out?