Robert Spence in the 1920’s flew a biplane over Los Angeles and photographed the city from above, using a 46-pound camera. Many of those images can be seen today while you solve puzzles in present time when you play L.A. Noire.
Team Bondi, the Australian development team which worked on Rockstar Games’ new blockbuster L.A. Noire, spent countless hours scanning over the photographs Spence took early last century, and coming up with ideas of traffic patterns and public transportation routes as well as building locations and conditions.
Simon Wood, production designer at Team Bondi describes the pictures as a “magical find, as they’re the equivalent of satellite photography”.
By using this imagery as a base, the developers were able to piece together the most accurate version of Los Angeles in the 1940s that has ever been created.
While most of the talk of L.A. Noire has been Rockstars use of the latest Motion Scan technology, the full-face motion capture and the Uncanny Valley characters blurring the lines between gaming and film. It’s the images from Robert Spence that have added the extra layer of authenticity to the game with the near exact locations of the L.A. back before many of our parents and grandparents were born.
The gang over at Popsci has the complete story and more images you can check out here.
(Thanks Joseph)
Source: Popsci
