Distance to quest marker... is it based on feet or meter?

[draconis184]

Distance to quest marker... is it based on feet or meter?

So there is this thing that's been gnawing at my thoughts lately. Is the distance to markers on the map actually feet or meters? Because it seems too short to be in meters, and in my mind, it would make a lot more sense if those numbers mean feet. But then if you do the math, then the entire Velen map, when sized up, is about 5000x5000 'units'... now if this were meters, then it would mean 25 square kilometers, not too shabby, considering Skyrim had only 16. But if you do it in feet, then well, you get the idea, The Witcher 3's world is actually much smaller than what we were promised.

So what do you think? Is the distance shows up on the mini map actually feet or meter? I tried to do some estimation, and I have to say feet makes more sense to me.

 

[cyberpunkforever]

i think it´s feet, for the number increases or decreases very fast on running or walking, too fast to be meters

 

[draconis184]

If that's the case then TW 3's world is a lot smaller than what we got from the information posted a month before release. I believe there was some claim that Velen alone was 64 kilometers square, and Skellige Isles were of similar size.

Now if you do the math, then Velen is roughly 8 km2, plus Skellige, thats another 8km2 if we're generous, then White orchard, tha t's about 1,5 km2 and Kaer Morhen Valley, another 1 km2... Sum it up and we can dismiss that nonsense claim that TW 3's world being some kind of humongous world at about 200ish km2 as was claimed by various websites. I believe the claim that TW 3 being 20% larger than Skyrim was the correct one.

 

[Lytha]

Can't be feet.

I just ran a quick test in Vizima. Exactly 10 steps in walk-mode equal a "10 distance units" from the quest marker.

10 steps in walking mode equal also ~22 floor tiles of the throne room in Vizima. The small floor tiles to the sides of the thron room's entrance area. They're close to the example door I've chosen. Chessboard white/dark pattern.

Door width is 3 floor tiles (door taken as example is the one between throne room and the garden).

Hard to say how wide that door really is, except by comparing its width to the height of the guard next to it, it should be about 1m wide (that would make that guard about 1.80m tall, which seems reasonable).

So, assuming the door is 1m wide, 1 floor tile would be 33cm.

Then Geralt's 10 steps ( = ~22 floor tiles) are ~7m.

Or, in other words, 1 step, or "1 TW3 distance unit" would be about 70cm.


With 5000x5000, you'd end up with 3.5x3.5km. ~12km^2



Now, while we can argue if the 0.7m is precise, we can surely agree that Geralt does not do 1 foot long steps, right?




Also, why would any person outside of the USA chose 0.3048m as measure unit?

 

[draconis184]

Can't be feet.

I just ran a quick test in Vizima. Exactly 10 steps in walk-mode equal a "10 distance units" from the quest marker.

10 steps in walking mode equal also ~22 floor tiles of the throne room in Vizima. The small floor tiles to the sides of the thron room's entrance area. They're close to the example door I've chosen. Chessboard white/dark pattern.

Door width is 3 floor tiles (door taken as example is the one between throne room and the garden).

Hard to say how wide that door really is, except by comparing its width to the height of the guard next to it, it should be about 1m wide (that would make that guard about 1.80m tall, which seems reasonable).

So, assuming the door is 1m wide, 1 floor tile would be 33cm.

Then Geralt's 10 steps ( = ~22 floor tiles) are ~7m.

Or, in other words, 1 step, or "1 TW3 distance unit" would be about 70cm.


With 5000x5000, you'd end up with 3.5x3.5km. ~12km^2


Also, why would any person outside of the USA chose 0.3048m as unit for anything?

Thanks for the calculation. I hope someone will be able to clarify this topic. It seems extremely odd to me that The Witcher 3 neither use metric nor feet system to represent the distance. And it's true that one distance unit equals one step, this is clarified by the symbol 'steps' next to it... So we have to figure out the length of Geralt's walking step.

A quick google search yielded me this result: "The average person's stride length is approximately 2.5 feet long"... so it seems your calculation was indeed correct.

 

[Lytha]

Looking at door and guard from more far away, it appears that the door is a bit wider than 1m (still assuming the guard is ~1.8m tall). I had a bad angle and too close proximity at first.

Failing a "motivation to do more calculations" roll right now, I'd say: That step length can be anything between 0.5 and 0.9m.


Hrm... or trying again, with a measuring tape:

Door width = 1.5cm
Guard height = 2.2cm

Assuming 1.8m height for the Guard, I get a scale factor of 81.81 here...
That makes the door 1.22m wide.

0.41cm for the floor tile
9m for the 10 steps

=> 1 step = 0.9m


Woops, that's surprisingly large.

 

[draconis184]

So we can safely assume that the witcher's world total size when summed up should be around 25 ish kilometers square. Still massive, but I honestly don't know where we got the rubbish talk about 100-130 km2 before release

 

[Lytha]

It's a bit more than that (see the edited calculation with measuring tape above).
Step length, according to presumption "guard height = 1.8m", seems now more like 0.9m.

But feel free to correct me. (Those tiles really do not look like 0.4m to me, in comparison to an NPC's or Geralt's feet. This is weird.)


5000x5000 = 4500x4500 = ~20km^2 for the Velen map

+ ~20km^2 for Skellige?
Not sure about the step size of White Orchard and Kaer Morhen.

Total size is definitely not in the hundreds of km^2s, but it's also not really tiny.

 

[draconis184]

A step being 0.9 meters is quite a stretch. It's almost one meter, and there's definitely no way one 'unit' can be that close. The bridge at Crow's Perch measures at about 50 'units'. There's simply no way that bridge is 45 meters long. I'd say more like 35 meters

 

[gtcarlson]

While I have no idea what units they use, nor do I really care haha, but there's been a couple YouTube videos of people walking across maps. Witcher 3 (skellige, Velen, white orchard) takes about 2hours and skyrim is about 30 mins. So the ~130km2 floating around is about 4x the size of skyrim (apparently ~30km2) so makes sense if we base it off that but doesn't mean it's at all correct.

As for the distance I just assumed it was steps while jogging or close too.

 

[rethla]

I dont know guys. Counting steps for a good 15min it seems to me Geralts walking steps are rougly 0.9 of the steps counting at the minimap. Walking hundred steps counted down roughly 90 steps to the target etc. and i made several tries in different directions and elevation.

 

[jj284b]

0.9m = 1 yard... seems to me game uses imperial system, not metric.

 

[Lytha]

That is doubtful. 0.9m step length is not realistic at all; the calculations in Vizima are based on only 10 steps and the length comparisons were not 100% precisely done or re-evaluated by others. Also, not sure if the presumption "guard height (without the wings on top of the helmet, of course) = 1.8m" is really sensible.

And the devs are not from the US. No reason why they should use non-metrics. Except to get some medieval flair into the game, maybe.


The distance unit is still "something between 0.5 and 0.9m", IMHO.

 

[draconis184]

As I said, the main reason to find out about this is to determine the total size of the game's world, since this is the only 'ruler' we have in game. It's not because I'm that interested in how far the distance between me and the quest giver .is.... still, I think Lytha is pretty close. I doubt one unit is 0.9m, that's too long. So it should be more than 0.5m and less than 0.9... now if only we can find a way to measure this... hmm something about the Sun and the shadows, maybe?

 

[Riven-Twain]

seems to me game uses imperial system, not metric.

Ay, Nilfgaardian measurements.

 

[jj284b]

That is doubtful. 0.9m step length is not realistic at all; the calculations in Vizima are based on only 10 steps and the length comparisons were not 100% precisely done or re-evaluated by others. Also, not sure if the presumption "guard height (without the wings on top of the helmet, of course) = 1.8m" is really sensible.

And the devs are not from the US. No reason why they should use non-metrics. Except to get some medieval flair into the game, maybe.


The distance unit is still "something between 0.5 and 0.9m", IMHO.

it's a medieval game... imperial measurements were used in entire Europe during Medieval period.. (even though every country had slightly different measurements)

 

[Lytha]

it's a medieval game... imperial measurements were used in entire Europe during Medieval period.. (even though every country had slightly different measurements)

That's not the point, really. We already know that TW3 Distance Unit = approx. Geralt's step size at walking speed. Needs some more evaluation by walking some more in a straight line away from a marker, maybe, but it's clear so far.

Question is currently, how much that is in meters. Or in feet.

 

[sv3672]

I dont know guys. Counting steps for a good 15min it seems to me Geralts walking steps are rougly 0.9 of the steps counting at the minimap. Walking hundred steps counted down roughly 90 steps to the target etc. and i made several tries in different directions and elevation.

Walking about 70 units of distance takes about 37 seconds of time, but this would need to be measured more accurately and over a longer distance. Also, running reduces the time to ~13 seconds, and sprinting to ~9 seconds. These short times are not very accurate, though. But the biggest problem is not having any known reference, without knowing the actual walking/running speeds, these times do not tell much - that is a greater uncertainty than what results from the inaccuracy of measurements. If we assume that the walking speed is 5 kph, then from the above numbers one unit of distance would be 0.734 m.

It would be interesting to know if there is a known conversion from map units to actual distance in the REDkit for Witcher 2, and if it remained the same in TW3's updated engine. At least in the case of Bethesda games, it has been the same since Morrowind that 64 units = 1 yard, and the player's coordinates can be displayed with a console command, so that makes measurements easy.

now if only we can find a way to measure this... hmm something about the Sun and the shadows, maybe?

Shadows would be of some help with something of a known height, and with the light at a known angle (such as 45 degrees when the length of the shadow is the same as the height of the object). The height of Geralt could be assumed to be 1.8 m, at least this is probably not inaccurate by more than 10%, then we need the length of the shadow repeated (accurately) enough times so that it is a large enough number of steps, and this would need to be done at the right time of day. Still not very good.

However, assuming that one step is about 0.7 m is already useful at least for a rough estimate of the map sizes.

---------- Updated at 12:28 PM ----------

While I have no idea what units they use, nor do I really care haha, but there's been a couple YouTube videos of people walking across maps. Witcher 3 (skellige, Velen, white orchard) takes about 2hours and skyrim is about 30 mins. So the ~130km2 floating around is about 4x the size of skyrim (apparently ~30km2) so makes sense if we base it off that but doesn't mean it's at all correct.

As for the distance I just assumed it was steps while jogging or close too.

The difference does not seem to be that large, the Velen/Novigrad maps fits within a square of 6000x6000 steps (it is somewhat smaller than that, and not all of what is visible on the map can actually be accessed), while Skellige is more like 7000x6000, but most of that is water with the odd smuggler cache here and there.

For comparison, a rectangle around Dead Crone Rock, Black-Briar Lodge, Broken Oar Grotto, and Ruins of Rkund in Skyrim is 378403x267242 map units, or 5.41x3.82 km. So, assuming that one TW3 step is 0.75 m, Velen/Novigrad is similar size to Skyrim, and Skellige slightly larger, but with a low density of content. And for TW3, I even included unused parts of the map.

 

[AnklaX]

It's less than a meter. I think the unit is in yards. Cant be sure. I think modders will be able to get into the files and do a proper calculation.