History Main / SpaceCompression

* Throughout the ''Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog'' franchise, Angel Island is consistently depicted as a huge, verdant FloatingIsland in the middle of an open ocean. This is also the case in a ''VideoGame/SonicAdventure'' CGI cutscene where it [[ColonyDrop falls out of the sky]]... but during ordinary gameplay, it's a tiny island that's featurelass save for the Master Emerald's shrine, and close enough to the Mystic Ruins to be connected by a simple log bridge. As well as the usual practical considerations, this also helps explain how Knuckles is actually able to travel between Angel Island and the mainland as per the demands of the plot.

* The galaxy map in ''VideoGame/GalacticCivilizations II'' shows densely packed star systems with planets only a few solar radii apart, to the extent that a planet can look closer to one in another system than to another one in its own (or even to its own system's star). {{Justified|Trope}} in-game with the explanation that starship hyperdrives can travel much faster in interstellar space than within gravity wells, so the map's compression represents travel times rather than actual distances.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'', while the actual area of a game world, not counting the glitchy [[EldritchLocation "far lands"]] is over 140 million square kilometers (~50 million square miles), biomes are at most a few hundred meters across (in some versions, it was even possible to see the edge of a biome when standing in the center of it). The seemingly lightning-fast powered minecarts are actually going at around 40 km/h (~25 mph). Height, too, is extremely limited, with the tallest snow-capped mountains topping out at around 100 meters above sea level, despite players being able to build considerably higher. Not being able to dug further than 64 meters ''below'' sea level, at least, is justified by the fact that the rock is just too hard for any tools to penetrate.

See also UnitsNotToScale, ClownCarBase and ThrivingGhostTown.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'', while the actual area of a game world, not counting the glitchy [[EldritchLocation "far lands"]] is over 140 million square kilometers (~50 million square miles), biomes are at most a few hundred meters across (in some versions, it was even possible to see the edge of a biome when standing in the center of it). The seemingly lightning-fast powered minecarts are actually going at around 40 km/h (~25 mph).

* Using real-world travel times in a game tends to quickly become tedious, especially if the player is walking and especially if your world takes place with [[TechnologyLevels lower levels of technology]] where cars/planes/teleporters don't exist yet. Remember that it was the ninteenth century before ''80 days'' became a plausible amount of time in which to circumnavigate the globe; walking from one side of the world map to the other would take ''years'' in a realistic scale. Heck, walking from one major city to another would take ''days'' if not ''weeks''.

*** Apparently in early Alpha builds the continents were much more realistically sized, but testers and employees rapidly realised that this was ''incredibly boring''. (A good hint... back in "Vanilla", people would complain about the flight from ''Moonglade'' to ''Thunder Bluff''. Imagine how it'd be if it were realistically sized.)

* ''VideoGame/{{Runescape}}'' is one of the offenders. Towns take as much space as forests, yet stories of [=NPCs=] and history of the land might leave you another impression. One of the examples is how vampyres in this game are unaware that the town called Burgh De Rott is not abandoned at all despite them being only 20 meters away from it.

* The Mojave Wasteland in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' is even egregious. While the real-life area covered is about 10,000 square miles, the in-game world is only 8.502 square kilometres. This is most notable around Hoover Dam, which, when overlaid over the actual map, grew by several orders of magnitude.

** The mod will actually also see an [[InvertedTrope inversion]] it with their ''Cyrodiil'' project, as since it is scaled to Skyrim, the titular province will actually be slightly bigger than it was in ''TES IV''.

Bottom: London idealized for lorry drivers.]]

* In ''VideoGame/DragonQuest'', like most [=RPG=]s, you [[WalkingTheEarth Walk The Earth]]. Normally, this trope can be avoided by assuming that only the important stuff is shown, not to mention world maps in Eastern [=RPG=]s are deliberately on a wider scales than the towns. In [[VideoGame/DragonQuestVIII VIII]], however, the game keeps track of how far you've walked. By the end of the game, once you've walked over more or less every square inch of the planet, it tells you that you've walked maybe 500 kilometers.
* In the first ''{{VideoGame/Wild ARMs|1}}'' game, you can walk around the entire world on the world map (yes, it's spherical) in a minute or two, though you'll need a plane and/or boat to get though the ocean areas.
* ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' is nothing out of the ordinary for this article. It still hits home hard when you're familiar with the (real-life) areas and realize you'd ''kill'' to have those kind of commute times (think minutes on foot versus half an hour in traffic)...
** Compare to the first two ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' games -- the world map was realistically large (so the player travelled between places on an overworld map), though the settlements themselves weren't very big.

** Still, the kicker are the Vaults themselves: The typical capacity of a Vault in the canon is 1,000 dwellers. No single Vault depicted in any game is close to holding a ''tenth'' of that.

* The Mojave Wasteland in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' is even worse. The area covered is about 10,000 square miles, the in-game world... not so much. This is most notable around Hoover Dam, which, when overlaid over the actual map, grew by several orders of magnitude.

** ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsIII'' actually features a few aversions - while it's implied that, once again, they're not going around the ''whole'' world, the areas that're just towns are ''parts'' of larger cities. This is one of the reasons why San Fransokyo and The Caribbean are [[BestLevelEver so well received]] - you're only around ''some'' areas of the town, but they manage to be somewhat of a WideOpenSandbox.

* The ''VideoGame/{{Elite}}'' franchise has gone back and forth on this trope, either playing it straight, averting it but providing some sort of ''time'' compression mechanism or both. And someone created a "realistic scale" mod for FanRemake ''VideoGame/{{Oolite}}'', apparently to prove a point about [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality why this trope exists]] because using it entails sitting around waiting for something to happen for literal ''hours''.

* The ''Battlecruiser'', ''Universal Combat'' and ''Galactic Command'' series by 3000AD totally averts this trope and pretty much everything is to scale. A planet is literally planet sized and it takes hours if not days to travel around it once. If anything these games lampshade why space compression is one of the AcceptableBreaksFromReality.

* Totally averted in the ''VideoGame/SilentHunterSeries'' saga, where a patrol could take weeks mainly due to the time required to arrive to your destination and to return to your base (plus extra time if you decide to wander around). Excellent examples of this are when you have a type IX submarine and are ordered to patrol the North American coast or the seas near equatorial or south Africa, and the vastness of the Pacific Ocean ('nuff said). They show quite well why time compression is a must on that kind of games.

* ''VideoGame/EuroTruckSimulator'' heavily condenses Europe, with transnational journeys taking far less time than they would in RealLife and most cities reduced to a handful of trucking-related businesses and distribution centers. This is likely because, save for [[WebVideo/DesertBusForHope special cases]], not many gamers have the time or patience for a real-time European roadtrip.

* The cities in the 3D ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' series are kinda like miniature megalopolises: [[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIII Liberty City]] is the size of a small suburb, [[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoViceCity Vice City]] is the size of a coast town, and the entire ''state'' of [[VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas San Andreas]] is not even bigger than a large city.
** Ironically, the need to keep the player from traveling out of the city when the game added aircraft led to this trope going in the exact opposite direction and essentially turning Vice City and ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'''s Liberty City into isolated city states and San Andreas into a Hawaii analogue by surrounding them with miles of ocean and absolutely nothing in the distance. It can get a bit odd when you take your helicopter out of the fake New York City and discover that you can't even see the nearest land...
** In ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoV'' you can see the scale of compression easily by comparing it to a real life map of Los Angeles - some of the streets line up almost exactly, except that what is a major multi-lane avenue in LA is a residential side-street in GTA. Essentially, every street downgrades a level when making the transition from real life to GTA - highways become major streets, major streets become side streets, and side streets become alleyways between buildings.
** GTA V was probably the worst about this, since not only was the map itself clearly shrunk down, the characters still talk and act like it's larger. One mission that sees Trevor driving a semi-truck from downtown Los Santos to Paleto Bay along Route 1 has him asked how long it will take to get to their destination by Lamar, to which he replies that it will take hours, when, in game, the whole mission shouldn't take longer than 20 minutes or so. One radio DJ mentions an area called "The Valley" which tried to secede from Los Santos, an obvious reference to the real life San Fernando Valley... except San Fernando Valley lacks a counterpart on the map at all.
* ''VideoGame/JustCause'' and its sequels are set on fictional island archipelagos, which, whilst immense by videogame standards (''Just Cause 2'''s map is around 40 square kilometers), contain massive compression by real world standards: In ''VideoGame/JustCause2'', you can see a snow-covered mountain range, which is just above a steamy jungle, and across a small bay from an arid desert plateau.

* ''VideoGame/TheSaboteur'' places [[GayParee Paris]] within 30 minutes driving distance of Le Havre and Saarbrücken, and squashes the city of Paris into a smaller scale version. In reality it's a 2-3 hour drive from Paris to Le Havre, and a 3-5 one to Saarbrücken.

* The effect is still present, albeit somewhat diminished in its successor ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV''. On chocoboback getting from the southern tip of Eorzea to the furthest north one can go takes about forty five minutes. During an early quest an [=NPC=] casually mentions that going from the western gate of Ul'dah to the outlying town of Horizon is about half a day's ride. The player can reach it in less than a minute real time, and less than an hour by the in-game clock.

* ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' franchise started out with a realistically sized world, but has been shrinking with each installment. On a case-by-case basis:

** ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIIDaggerfall Daggerfall]]'' also featured part of the provinces of High Rock and Hammerfell at their full size. Bethesda says that their physical size amounts to 188,000 square miles (or 487,000 in square kilometers) -- that's twice the size of Great Britain. There are ''15,000'' full-sized towns, cities, villages, and dungeons to explore, and more than 750,000 [=NPCs=] capable of interaction -- impressive for a game from 1996. However, most of the terrain is randomly generated, non-quest-related locations are [[ProceduralGeneration procedurally generated]], and traveling by foot is as lengthy and tedious as [[WebVideo/DesertBusForHope playing Desert Bus]]. In the case of cities, most houses cannot be entered even by the most skilled thieves -- the player will be told "This house contains nothing of interest."

* ''VideoGame/BeyondSkyrim'', a massive {{Game Mod}}ding project for ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'', intends to recreate most of the continent of Tamriel in the game's engine, and keep the added provinces to the scale of the region of Skyrim. This means that this trope will be played straight with some part of Tamriel seen in older ''Elder Scrolls'' games. That said there will be a few twists on this.

** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild'' was heavily advertised as having the largest, most expansive ''Zelda'' world yet, but it still only takes about an hour of real-life time to go from one corner to the other. The lack of large settlements is somewhat justified, however, by the story taking place AfterTheEnd, in which the [[StarfishRobots Guardians]] obliterated the capital and several other towns in Central Hyrule while the smaller and/or further away villages were spared.

** The first game, ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsArena Arena]]'', was the largest and most fully-featured in terms of both square mileage and population -- you could explore the entire continent of Tamriel, which was on a scale with an actual real-life continent. Mind, due to the game using RandomlyGeneratedLevels, every place and NPC not associated with the main quest was rather lacking in uniqueness...

-->-- '''[[WebVideo/RosssGameDungeon Ross Scott]]''', on ''Videogame/TheCrew''

* ''VideoGame/TheCrew'' (pictured above) takes place in a shrunken mainland USA, with a player being able to drive from East Coast to West within two hours, or even one hour using the game's fastest cars. For comparison, the current record of coast-to-coast driving is a little under 29 hours.

See also UnitsNotToScale, ClownCarBase and ThrivingGhostTown. Has nothing to do with the primary use of [[AppliedPhlebotinum Metatron]] in ''VideoGame/ZoneOfTheEnders''.

Sometimes a game's environment is blatantly not to scale. The usual culprits are fantasy {{RPG}}s and WideOpenSandbox games. This freakish distortion of space is becoming more common these days, as the fashion is for photorealistic detail difficult to execute uniformly in a huge world and the banishment of abstractions such as [[OverworldNotToScale world maps]].

Note, of course, that even in games with a City Map/world map separation, the scale will still be substantially reduced relative, at least, to the real world. Remember that it was the ninteenth century before ''80 days'' became a plausible amount of time in which to circumnavigate the globe; walking from one side of the world map to the other would take ''years'' in a realistic scale. Heck, walking from one major city to another would take ''days'' if not ''weeks''.

* Using real-world travel times in a game tends to quickly become tedious. ''Especially'' if the player is walking.
* Pick your poison: LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading so your hardware isn't put under too much strain as you move from one area to the next, or Loads And Loads of Lagging as your hardware bakes itself trying to render it all. In the case of PC games, it's not always a good thing for a game to [[TechDemoGame overload and melt most computers available on the market trying to run it]].

* It could be made to look larger with fog, trees, and hills. Or the player could just imagine it as bigger than it looks.

* In ''VideoGame/NoMansSky'', this is played straight regarding the distance between planets. While travel times between planets may still be up to two minutes of sitting in your cockpit at top speed, the planets are still much closer together than in real life. Averted when it comes to some mission objectives, which can sometimes be located on the opposite side of the planet from where you are. If it were for your spaceship, it would take days to walk/drive to them.

[[caption-width-right:350:London in real life, and London for lorry drivers.]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/a7fcc7ebeb80b8b1e56fcd5486a158c2.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Above: [[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_states_wall_2002_us.jpg the 2002 National Atlas of the US]] (public domain)[softreturn]Below: The US as it appears in ''VideoGame/TheCrew'' (pre-''Wild Run'')]]