Although Rockstar Games is known for its attention to detail, sometimes creators can make mistakes. YouTube channel author Any Austin has returned with a new game investigation — he studied the airports in the Grand Theft Auto franchise games and highlighted the developers' "blunders."
He studied GTA 3, GTA Vice City, and GTA 5. The researcher focused not only on runways (RWYs), but also on other infrastructure elements, including taxiways.
In GTA 3, the airport turned out to be full of problems: Francis International Airport lacks basic marking elements; there are no numbers on the RWYs, and without them, according to the standard of the "Federal Aviation Administration", from a legal point of view, the runway cannot be considered a takeoff runway (i.e., it can only be used for landing in an emergency).
There are also questions about the central marking lines: their size changed from one end to the other. Taxiways are missing.
But not everything is so bad, in terms of lighting, the GTA 3 airport is made correctly (it seems this happened by accident). In the game, all the lights are red, although usually the central ones are white, and they are only made red in the last 300 meters from each end.
Francis International Airport has a very short runway, about 600 meters, so from a technical point of view, it turns out to be 300 meters in two directions, i.e., all the lights should be red, which is what the developers ended up with.
The execution is not ideal, but in general the situation in GTA 4 has improved: the runways received the corresponding numbers, and the central markings and landing zone were made correctly. Taxiways appeared, and everything is fine with the lighting: white and red lights are located correctly.
Any Austin also drew attention to a non-obvious point — in fact, planes never landed:
...if you look here long enough, you'll notice that none of the planes take off or land. Seriously, look. If you ever thought you saw one of these planes land in GTA 4, you were wrong. One just flies by, and the other two standing on the ground endlessly circle the taxiway, which gives the whole place the atmosphere of an airport model rather than a real one
The airport from GTA 5, inspired by Los Angeles, is also far from ideal. In terms of markings and lighting, everything is very good, but the taxiways have incorporated many errors.
For example, there is a sign indicating that "you are on taxiway A". However, in a completely different area of the airport, there is also a sign "you are on taxiway A" — this is incorrect.
This is not the only problem with the sign. It also warns about exiting onto a non-existent runway, which is designated as "26H", and there is also the number "1", which should show the direction to "runway 1".
At the same time, in reality, the designation "26H" is not used at all. There is no "Runway 1" at the location, and there is no clarifying direction arrow on this yellow sign.
Airports in the Grand Theft Auto series games are far from ideal. According to the aggregate of the ratings given by Any Austin, the airport from GTA 5 became the best by a wide margin — it broke ahead thanks to the detail and, as in reality, arrivals and departures are divided into two levels.