Moving water, real coastlines and towns with neighbourhoods

Published 31 Oct 2026

In short: the ground now looks right when you fly low. Water moves and reflects the sky, rivers have banks, the coast is the real coast, grass and bushes grow near the camera, and towns have neighbourhoods and tiered towers.

A river winding through a round generated city on a green and yellow plain, forest patches and the sea beyond, seen from about 9 km. — Bangkok from about 9 km: the city, the Chao Phraya and the coast beyond.

Towns with neighbourhoods

Towns used to be grey blocks. Now:

Roofs by neighbourhood. Whole blocks share one roof colour, orange, slate or green, instead of every roof picking its own.
Green inside town: yards and clumps of trees between the blocks.
Tiered big buildings. A tall building is stacked from boxes: a wide podium, setback tiers, then boxes on the roof.

The painted ground under a town and the 3D buildings share one roof palette, so a town looks the same from far away as from close.

A dense city of blocks with orange, slate and green roofs, towers in the core, a blue river curving through it. — Roofs by neighbourhood, and towers in the core.

A street-level view of a city: rows of orange-roofed houses, a green yard with trees, tiered towers behind. — Down at the rooftops: a green yard between the blocks, tiered towers behind.

Water that moves

Waves in three sizes that glint in the sun, calmer on rivers than at sea.
The sky reflected, more strongly when you look along the water.
Depth. Rivers are shallow and light at the banks, deep and dark mid-stream, and the land along them is wet.

A wide river between two banks of city blocks, light near the banks and dark blue in the middle. — The Chao Phraya from 150 m: shallow at the banks, deep in the middle.

Banks and shores

Along a river the land turns to mud, then pebbles, before the water. In town the river runs between concrete embankments. The sea shore is muddy.

Yellow-green ground meeting dark blue water along a thin pebbly bank, seen from 80 m. — A river bank from 80 m.

A real coastline

The coast used to follow the satellite map’s 500 m pixels. Now it comes from GSHHG, a world shoreline data set^[1], and is sharp. Rivers end in its estuaries.

A muddy shore with a few trees meeting the sea, waves glinting, seen from 300 m. — The sea shore from 300 m: mud, then waves.

Ground up close

Ground detail. Photographed ground textures, tiled every few metres by land type, give the ground near the camera grain and bumps instead of flat colour.
Ground cover. Grass, ferns and bushes grow within 1 km of a low camera, fading out from 650 m, and show while you are under 1.5 km up.

Credits

The coastline is GSHHG (Wessel and Smith), used under the LGPL. The ground textures and the grass, fern and bush models are from Poly Haven (CC0). More: credits.

Sources

GSHHG: A Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Geography Database, Paul Wessel and Walter H. F. Smith, SOEST, University of Hawaii. A Global Self-consistent, Hierarchical, High-resolution Geography Database