How Big is 'Pretty Big'?
Do you remember the first time you played Test Drive Unlimited all the way back in 2006/2007? How many times did you get lost early on? I wasn't too bad until I got myself into a long police chase which ended up becoming an off-road excursion... by the time I escaped I had absolutely no clue where I was. So no doubt you'd agree TDU1 had quite a large open world for its time.
As you would recall, the Millionaire's Challenge required players to complete a lap around the island of O'ahu in under 60 minutes, with competent players able to complete the event in 45 minutes by averaging speeds above 250 kph (150 mph).
What is interesting, however, is if you apply some turboduck maths, you can discover that the virtual version of O'ahu is much the same size as in reality. Or if that's too hard, you can always drive around the virtual island at the speed limit and compare the time it takes to what Google Maps suggests. But for the purposes of this article, let's assume that you can drive at an average speed 3 times faster in a supercar inside the game world compared to what the law allows in the real world.
Figure 1 - aside from some discrepancies in the shape of the island, the size and scale are close to being 1:1.
So nearly 8 years on from TDU1's launch on Xbox 360, let's have a look at what we know about the open world inside The Crew. Late last year, Creative Director Julian Gerighty made a few remarks regarding its size:
WARNING: MATHS CONTENT
If you ask Google Maps for directions from Los Angeles to the east coast, it will generally suggest a trip time of 39 hours.
If we could drive that distance 3 times as fast, it would take 13 hours. So if the world in The Crew were a 1:1 scale with reality, then its 'coast to coast' race would logically also take ~ 13 hours.
Since we know the game world is not to scale, and that the coast-to-coast race takes 1.5 hours, divide 13/1.5 to find the scale.
Now we [think we] know that the real USA is 8.666666667x larger than the USA found in The Crew.
VISUALISING THE SCALE
Figure 2 - a satellite image of America (Google Maps)
Figure 3 - an official illustration of the game world from The Crew.
Figure 4 - overlaying the game world on top of the satellite image at roughly the same size. Visual discrepancies are much larger compared to O'ahu.
Figure 5 - overlaying another copy of the game world image so that it appears scaled down as per the maths above. By now you can see how drastically the developers have had to scale down the USA for The Crew.
Figure 6 - It's not all bad news though. Look how relatively large the scaled down map is compared to O'ahu.
Figure 7 - in fact, it seems that we can fit O'ahu into the game world 43 times. Of course, all of this assumes our maths isn't floored. :)
ONE SMALL PROBLEM
Our calculations started off by using the number 39 as the number of hours needed to drive from Los Angeles to the east coast in real life. But have a closer look at Figure 4. The east coast in the game world appears to end near Tennessee on the satellite image. So perhaps the calculation should really be (27 hours/3)/1.5 = a scale factor of 6.
So, what do you make of all this? Shall we just stick to saying the game world in The Crew is 'pretty big'? Or do you have your own ideas for calculating the scale. Let us know in the comments below.
Don't forget to also visit the forums for more information on The Crew!
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