Cyberpunk 2077 Map Size MEASURED in game & comparison with GTA 5 / Witcher 3

A week ago, I made a video estimating the size of Night City using the coordinates from the Photo mode trailer. I have to say it was clever, but it led to huge inaccuracy due to two main reasons.

First, the thing that contributed the most is that I overestimated the map's playable area by a huge margin. From what I could see from driving or swimming to the map's edges, the playable bounding box is 65% smaller than what I estimated initially.
The area is definitely even smaller if we consider the true shape of the explorable area, but that is not something I had time to do yet, and maybe I will come back to this in a new video.

On top of that, the map scale was off by 16% on length. It is not much, but as the area is length squared, this leads to a whopping 34% error.

By combining those two effects, here is how the final in-game measurement compares with my trailer-based estimate.

For more Cyberpunk 2077 videos check out the following playlists:

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Special Thanks to my Patreons: Trisa133 ($5), Rudolf Wolter ($1) and GWR Dirky Dirk ($1)
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00:00 Intro
00:19 Error 1
00:45 Error 2
01:09 Method Validation
02:16 Final Results
02:23 Size Comparison
02:40 Final Remarks
03:21 Outro

I guess you may be wondering, well, if you got it wrong once, how can you be right now. And that is a valid concern.
Based on the constructive (and few not so constructive) feedback on my last video. I double-checked the main concerns you guys voiced in the comments.

This whole measurement is based on the XYZ coordinates from the photo mode. As some of you pointed out, what guarantee that those numbers indicate the coordinates in meters.

Honestly, I just took it for granted on my last video coz what else could it be, right? For this video, however, I made sure that those numbers mean something. To do that, I have done a few calibrations.
First, I used the waypoint markers to assess if they agree with the camera coordinates.
And yes, they match exactly with what you would expect considering the distance traveled.

And to rule out the possibility of this being wrong entirely, I measured our character V using those coordinates, and he is about 1.75 meters tall. Not bad. So yeah, the camera coordinates are indeed consistent, and the units they measure is without any reasonable doubt, meters.

Now, the rest is easy. Just drove to the corners of the map to minimize the error, collected the coordinates, plotted on a grid, and boom. The map scale is done.

Circling back to this video's introduction, this is how the Cyberpunk 2077 map compares to Velen and Los Santos.

Oh, and before you write down that Devs said that the cyberpunk map would be smaller than the witcher 3, don't forget that the Witcher 3 also have White Orchard, Skeliege, and Toussaint, so there is a lot more than just Velen.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the map of Cyberpunk 2077 is highly explorable. There are hundreds of fully modeled interiors, and most of them are quite interesting.
Although it would be cool to be able to walk everywhere, that is unrealistic at best. I mean, you can't expect that every single room from every single floor of every single building to be explorable.
Keep in mind is that Cyberpunk 2077 is NOT a sandbox game. It is a story-driven RPG, and the map is there to serve a story. This becomes clear after a few hours into the game. There are A LOT of explorable interiors, but they are all there as the stage for the main plot.

[ianeons]

It's slightly smaller than RDR2's map but keep in mind RDR2 is mostly marshes, swamps, plains, forests, mountains, and deserts. Cyberpunk is a lot more dense.

[marcraider]

you can even climb many buildings and find some stories or easter eggs in high places that many ppl missed thinking this is just like a gta game. The level of detail from above the roofs is amazing, no other open world city game has achieved this since Mirror's edge

[HowBigistheMap]

This video is correct. I jogged across the map. It took 1 hour. If I would walk, it would take like 2 hours. I walked across the map in GTA V, that took 1 hour and 50 minutes.

[antoniosanjurjo]

This game is just awesome. I can see myself spending hours on my net runner build.

[patcharapornjenviriyakul]

I actually don't care about the size unless there're fine-grain details there. Agreed with what you say - the world map is highly explorable and consists of hundreds of fully modulated interior. Time to explore every inch on the map~ Thank you for the great video.

[Tony-lfil]

The real question is did you measure each PP size ?

[_yikesforever]

Thanks for doing the work! The map was OVERWHELMING but I loved every nook and cranny. <3

[alexlarson]

I am a metrologist and roughly attempted to estimate the map as well, my estimate and your revised map look very close!!. I used the little grove-street like cul-de-sac turnaround circle and approx. matched it to GTA's grove street dead end semi circle. I then figured that an 8 lane freeway in Los Santos was slightly wider than the 8 lane in Night City, just visually comparing the lanes, the GTA lanes look a little chonkier. I just did a rough scaling in MS paint off those references. Had no idea if I was right. Stumbled on your video and we're both quite close, so I think that's some validation! Night City looked tiny when I first looked at the online interactive map, it's deceptive because the big silver building in little China and the buildings in and around Corpo Plaza, Downtown are on a scale significantly larger than anything in los santos or most real big cities. I first also thought the Dogtown stadium was comparable to Maze Bank Arena, but i think Maze Bank arena is much smaller?

[stormrabbit]

Thanks for the post-release estimate on the map size. Great video!

[ZitroNnn]

2:50 Omg, finally someone who understand this game and knows what it is all about. Great video.

[aswin]

I want to memorize the entire map just like we know our area in real life..

[Enders]

There are A LOT of explorable interiors (That you don't need to be on the mission to get into) that are not involved in the main story at all.
This game is super addicting and immersive. If you haven't tried to turn of all the hud elements and actually play the game, do it! They become dynamic hud elements and why you need will be on screen only when you need it. <3 have fun

[luka]

So Night city is basically 2x size Los Santos? I am interested in just urban area

[XxkevinxX]

i get lost when just walking around the map is a maze its great

[Squatimus]

It's about time a video game characters height isn't 6ft and above. *Sobs*

[gordon]

loving the game so far! thanks for the video! it was informative

[gamingtonight]

Don't really care, just know it's huge to me! And I would add that there is something around every corner. That certainly wasn't the case in GTA or even Witcher 3!

[RLOWG]

i love both of them, GTA and Cyberpunk, Rockstar is my favorite game developers

[Somber.Killer]

I'm came here just out of curiosity but people really don't need to get worked up over the map size.

[crozraven]

So still kinda bigger than both Witcher 3 Velen & GTAV anyway. Got it. Also, very likely the expansions will add more maps or areas to explores, just like Witcher 3 HoS and B&W.