You can research a real city for a game without traveling to every location: combine maps and aerial imagery for the overall layout, street-level imagery for what pedestrians see, and local plans or GIS data for details those images cannot show. Then turn a small number of carefully chosen references into sketches and an accuracy-focused blockout before adapting the space for play.
Start with a design question, not a folder of references
Decide what the game needs to learn from the city before you begin browsing. A focused question makes remote research more useful than collecting attractive images without knowing what they are meant to support.
- Spatial structure: How do streets, blocks, landmarks, waterfronts, and neighborhood edges connect?
- Street character: What are the building fronts, sidewalks, materials, street furniture, and pedestrian sightlines like?
- Place identity: Which skyline, architectural pattern, civic space, or neighborhood mood makes this location recognizable?
- Gameplay: What routes, chokepoints, hiding places, open spaces, or other affordances could support the intended play?
Choose a few locations that answer those questions rather than trying to document an entire city. A 2021 GDC talk on Untitled Goose Game describes using Google Street View to scout real locations that fit the game’s design needs; the resulting levels combined selected real spaces with gameplay affordances and aesthetic restrictions. GDC Vault: Google Maps, Not Greyboxes.
Use different sources for different scales
No single remote source can tell you how a place is organized, what it feels like at street level, and what its unseen geometry contains. Move between broad views and close inspection, and treat each source as evidence for a particular question.
Outdated Drivers Are Slowing You Down
One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware matchPC Slower Than It Used to Be?
A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11#1 Best Overall
| Source | Useful for | Limits to check |
|---|---|---|
| Maps and aerial imagery | Neighborhood structure, major routes, block shapes, water, edges, and relative position | May not show street-level character or current detail |
| Street View or equivalent street imagery | Building fronts, sidewalk relationships, visible materials, street furniture, and pedestrian viewpoints | Coverage and capture dates vary; imagery cannot establish unseen interiors or access |
| Government plans and architectural archives | Building footprints, plans, historic development, and formal street or civic designs | Records may be incomplete or hard to find, and may not reflect current appearance |
| City open data and GIS layers | Structured street, building, terrain, and other geospatial information | Accuracy, schema, collection date, license, and processing effort vary |
| Sketches, paintovers, and study blockouts | Understanding proportion, routes, sightlines, and layout relationships | These are analysis aids; they do not validate the source data by themselves |
Read the city map first
Start with a map or aerial view to understand adjacency and orientation: where a landmark sits relative to streets, which routes connect districts, and what physical features create edges. Use this broad view to select the blocks or spaces that matter to the game.
Inspect the pedestrian view
Use street-level imagery to study how buildings meet the public space. Note visible façade proportions, sidewalk width, materials, street furniture, and what can be seen down a street or across a square. Street imagery is evidence of what the camera captured at a particular time—not proof of current access, interior layout, or conditions behind the camera.
Look for local records where geometry matters
For important buildings or civic spaces, search municipal open-data portals, planning documents, government records, and architectural archives. They may provide footprints, plans, street sections, historic imagery, or other details that a street photograph cannot. The Level Design Book’s research guidance recommends virtual visits with Street View and looking to government or architectural archives for plans and blueprints.
Keep a source log and test what each reference proves
For every useful reference, record its source and URL, the place it depicts, when it was captured or published if that information is available, and the design question it helps answer. This prevents a visually convincing image from quietly standing in for evidence it cannot provide.
- A street image can support visible surface details and pedestrian viewpoints, but not unseen interiors or current access.
- A plan can support geometry and intended organization, but may not communicate how a space feels at pedestrian height.
- A GIS layer can provide structured geometry, but collection dates, generalization, and modeling decisions can make it differ from present-day appearance.
- For any source you may reuse or publish derived material from, check its applicable reuse terms rather than assuming that online access grants reuse rights.
Turn observation into a study before laying out the level
Browsing becomes design research when you actively analyze what you see. The Level Design Book recommends gathering references, studying them closely, making notes or sketches, and using paintovers when access to game geometry is limited.
- Choose a small set of representative views. Include a map-scale view and pedestrian-level references for the same location where possible.
- Annotate spatial relationships. Mark paths, nodes, edges, repeated forms, sightlines, and major landmarks. Note what draws attention and how routes connect.
- Make quick sketches or paintovers. Reduce the reference to proportions, rhythm, access points, and visual cues that matter to the design question.
- Build a temporary accuracy study. Make a throwaway map or blockout that tests what is there and how the space connects before creating the playable layout. The Level Design Book recommends an accuracy-focused study before the final layout or blockout; it is a way to understand construction and flow, not necessarily content for the shipped game.
Adapt the real place for play without losing its logic
A game environment is an interpretation, not a requirement to reproduce every street or building exactly. Preserve the features that establish the location’s identity and spatial logic, then change scale, access, routes, or sightlines where players need clearer navigation or better pacing.
Rank #4
In a 2017 article, game urbanist and designer Konstantinos Dimopoulos wrote, “Game cities must always make sense.” Game Developer: Urban Design and the Creation of Videogame Cities. For a level, that means edits should form a coherent place: a shortcut should connect plausibly, a landmark should help orient the player, and a narrowed route should serve a clear gameplay purpose. The Untitled Goose Game case likewise frames level design as a mix of real locations, gameplay affordances, and aesthetic restrictions rather than a literal copy of a city.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.When to use a GIS-to-engine workflow
Maps, street imagery, plans, screenshots, and sketches are enough to begin most projects. Consider a GIS pipeline when the design depends on substantial real terrain, many building footprints, or spatial data that needs to be repeated or updated systematically. It adds technical work: data must be selected, processed, checked, and presented in a way that suits the game.
Best Value
City data still needs curation
Esri Canada’s 2023 account of a Toronto Complete Streets project describes combining Toronto open-data buildings and street information in a Unity visualization. The team improved building layers and adapted a basemap after finding that some details did not suit ground-level viewing. The example shows why an imported data layer should not be treated as a finished game environment. Esri Canada: Visualizing Complete Street Designs in VR.
Check source dates and scope
Esri’s account of Project Lake Ontario describes processing lidar and imagery into terrain and buildings for a Unity game, and notes that collection times differed between some lidar and surrounding imagery. The same account reports a 10-week undergraduate summer project; that is a description of that project, not a general estimate for reconstructing a city. Esri / ArcUser: Building Video Games with ArcGIS Technology.
Expect pipeline-specific geometry work
A 2026 ISPRS-Archives paper by Martial, Kubono, and Miura documents an open-source route from CityGML through Blender to an interactive Godot environment. It describes geometry repair, reprojection, level-of-detail choices, and collision geometry as parts of the workflow. In a Yokohama participatory urban-design workshop, the authors report that approximately 50 elementary-school students placed 1,192 assets without system failure on six standard classroom computers. Those figures describe the paper’s workshop validation, not a general performance benchmark. ISPRS Archives: 2026 CityGML-to-Godot pipeline paper.
Quick Recap
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
Do these 3 things before closing this tab:
1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches
