Areal sizes of TES

[jygglag]

after a long time , I finally calculate the area of vvardenfell, Solstheim and cyrodiil, the result really amaze me

vvardenfell:7.9km square
Solstheim:0.6km square
cyrodiil:3.7km square


The only thing that i think it won't change is the height of a man, by using the height of a man i calculate the width of two landmark(in cyrodil, I use oblivion gate, in vvardenfell i use the bridge which Snowy Granius lie on). I use the width of two landmark to calculate the actual length of two online map. Finally the result come.

[Lindai]

This surely doesn't include the slopes of hills/mountains etc. does it?

I could swear Cyrodiil is a lot more than 3.7 km squared.

[Andere]

This issue has been discussed in a couple of threads. To get it finally done with, I'll change the topic to Areal sizes of TES.

[Jeff]

Just as a reference, here was the last topic discussing land size: http://forums.uesp.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=18479

I've been reading that Morrowind is about 9 sq. km, but Oblivion is about 16.

[jygglag]

This surely doesn't include the slopes of hills/mountains etc. does it?

I could swear Cyrodiil is a lot more than 3.7 km squared.

I include all of them, I even round it up a little bit

[Jpot]

I don't get it, how did you measure the distances? Appoximate based on the height of landmarks?

[jygglag]

I don't get it, how did you measure the distances? Appoximate based on the height of landmarks?

Not the height, is the width of the landmark.

[H8Ball]

Have you got your maths heads screwed on tightly? Don't want 'em working loose and falling off, do we? Although many of them may need serious oiling to cure the rusty squeaks and groans before I'm through. Here goes...

Oblivion's coordinate system is based on "Game Units". I'll call them GU.

There are 64 GU to a Yard (3 feet), so taking the height of a man to be 6 Feet (2 Yards), that's 128 GU. An exterior Cell is 4,096x4,096 GU. So we have Cell size (side length) = 4,096/64 = 64 Yards, and Cell area = 64^2 = 4,096 Sq Yards.

In TES Construction Kit, I've used World > World Spaces, selected the Tamriel Worldspace and clicked Output Cell Ref Counts. This creates a tab delimited TXT file containing 1 line for every cell in the Tamriel Worldscape. There are 14,686 lines, so that's how many Cells there are in the Worldspace. OK, armed with this info, it's easy enough to get the area of Tamriel. 14,686*4,096 = 60,153,856 Sq Yards.

Now, to convert to Sq Miles. There are 1,760 Yards to a Mile, so 1,760^2 = 3,097,600 Sq Yards to a Sq Mile. Finally, convert the area of Tamriel to Sq Miles. 60,153,856/3,097,600 = 19.4195041 Sq Miles. We'll round that off to our final answer of 19.42 Sq Miles.

If you want the answer in Sq Km, there are 1.6093 Km to a Mile, so 1.6093^2 = 2.58984649 Sq Km to a Sq Mile. We'll round that to 2.59 Sq Km. SO the answer is 19.42*2.59 = 50.2978. We'll round that to 50.3 Sq Km

Mind you, that answer is calculated from ALL Cells, including those outside the Cyrodiil Border Regions which can't be accessed unless you use bBorderRegions=0 in Oblivion.ini. And I for one ain't gonna waste my time sitting looking at World > Region Editor and counting the cells that lie completely or partially outside them! If someone wants to do it, select Cyrodiil Border Regions in World > Region Editor. Call your count C and recalculate AreaSqMiles = (14686-C)*4096/3,097,600 and AreaSqKm = AreaSqMiles*2.59...

Tip: In the Region Editor, zoom in/out using the Mouse Wheel and scroll around by moving the mouse while holding the Middle Mouse (Wheel) Button. Unfortunately, they didn't think to include simple things like scroll bars, even though the placeholders are there for them. Took me a while to figure out I could USE the Mouse!

The standard answer you can find on the Internet is approx. 16 Sq Miles = 16*2.59 = 41.44 Sq Km. It's probably around HALF that because it looks like at least 50% of Cells are outside the Cyrodiil Border Region. I'd estimate about 7 Sq Miles, which converts to 18.13 Sq Km.

Hope this helps put the issue to bed, tuck it in, read it a story and sing it a lullaby to send it to sleep.

[jygglag]

How about vvardenfell

[TheoC]

The Far Cry 2 gameworld is apparently 50km2 and thats smaller than Oblivion gameworld....

[The Red Robin]

Someone once said that everything is just a representation of something larger, and is scaled down 30 times (eg. 1 minute of traveling = 30 minutes, 1 mile = 30 miles), so I think a more accurate answer wouldn't be 19.42 sq. miles, but actually 17478 sq. miles (19.42 * 900). This seems much more realistic.

[H8Ball]

Which would make Robin 6ft / 30 = 0.2ft, or 2.4 inches tall. Sounds about right.

A lot of games use illusions of scale to "fool" the brain's vision system, and Oblivion is no exception. The most commonly used illusions are...

1. Snow-Capped Mountains: If they're snow-capped, they must be HIGH enough to be cold enough to have permanent snow cover, so they MUST be thousands of feet high, right? Wrong! The mountains in Oblivion are actually low hills only a few hundred feet high at most so it's impossible for them to be cold enough to BE snow-capped. However, they're textured AS snow-capped anyway, which fools our vision system into "seeing" them as thousands of feet higher than they really are.

Tip: The distant trees (billboard sprites) on the mountainsides are a dead giveaway. They're far larger than in real-life. If those were REAL 50ft trees, they'd look like a blanket of "moss" from miles away. As it is, they're enormous in relation to the mountains, looking like they're 500ft feet high! Bethesda couldn't scale the trees down TOO far to look "realistic" because this would have vastly increased the number of billboards to be rendered, severely reducing framerates.

2. Atmospheric Fogging: We all know that objects gradually disappear into "bluish fog" with distance due to light scattering off water vapour, dust, and eventually even the gas molecules in the atmosphere. The blue (short wavelength) end of the spectrum is scattered most, which is why the "fog" appears bluish. Also the same reason why the sky appears blue, btw. If the world was truly flat (no horizon), you'd still be unable to see more than about 50 miles or so even on the clearest day. In Oblivion, the artificially closer/denser distance fog gives a maximum view distance of only a few miles, but we're used to it being about 50 miles. This means the part of our vision system that's had millions of years to evolve to do "distance cueing BY atmospheric fogging" is completely fooled into "seeing" everything as much further away.

3. Circuitous Routes: If a path zig-zags and loops around and it's impossible to take the straight-line shortest path between two points, the journey IS physically longer, so takes more time. This is used extensively in Morrowind to give the illusion of the landscape being much larger than it really is. You're hemmed in by high hills and are forced to take the long way around via a maze of valleys and passes. In fact, with high Athletics/Acrobatics and a Jump spell, it's possible to cross Vvardenfell from coast to coast in a couple of minutes flat!

4. Movement Speed: If your speed is low, the time taken to complete the journey is high, often giving the illusion of having travelled further. Morrowind used this illusion to great effect by deliberately making walking/running speeds painfully slow and using the Fatigue system to stop you running everywhere. You keep "running out of breath" and slowing down to walking speed (or even stopping) until your Fatigue recovers! The opposite is also true... If speed is high, time taken is low, giving the illusion of distance being short. Oblivion's landscape, even though it's larger than Morrowind's, seems smaller because your movement speed is faster, running has no effect on Fatigue and you have the option of riding a fast horse.

5. Fast-Travel: Being able to instantly "teleport" between locations gives the illusion of short times = short distances. Oblivion has free fast-travel so it's landscape, even though larger than Morrowind's, often seems much smaller. Morrowind limits fast-travel forcing you to make long journeys (via its Circuitous Routes and at limited Movement Speed), which makes the landscape seem much larger.

As for Vvardenfell... Morrowind uses the same Game Units as Oblivion so if you have the Morrowind Construction Set, why not work out the area? I'd do it myself, but I think I blew my brain fuse.

[nyk45]

The Far Cry 2 gameworld is apparently 50km2 and thats smaller than Oblivion gameworld....

It really isn't.

[KrisCrash]

H8Ball, when I first played Oblivion and only fast travelled I thought it was much BIGGER, actually, because I never went to explore. So I didnt see how little landscape went by between IC and Bruma :'D

Horizon and blue fog: well, on a clear day with you standing on flat land, the horizon is only 3 miles away!! But going on top of a hill helps a lot to add distance ;D Oblivion doesn't actually blue-fog if you put the settings up high, blue fog is an older trick to reduce the amount of polygons drawn in a softer fashion than simply cutting out a certain distance away from the player. It probably still 'cuts off' at the skybox (typically its a sphere though), but I have a feeling they actually made that sphere extremely massively big for this game, but since it moves with the camera it is hard to say. You'll never reach it.