Vice City vs Los Santos: the fan video that finally shows GTA 6's map scale
Reddit user u/Haykguy has published a video that drops the outline of Los Santos from GTA 5 onto the community-mapped version of GTA 6's world, so Vice City's estimated urban footprint can be seen in context instead of just measured. The overlay suggests Vice City swallows Los Santos with room to spare — but it is traced from the Community Mapping Project, not from any map Rockstar has published,
The comparison nobody could picture
"How big is Vice City, really?" has had an answer on paper since the preview circuit: about twice Los Santos, with a built-up area around eleven times larger. What it never had was a picture. A number like "twice Los Santos" means very little to anyone who has not measured GTA 5's map block by block.
Reddit user u/Haykguy fixed that. Instead of placing two maps side by side, the video he posted to r/GTA6 takes the traced outline of Los Santos and animates it directly over the community reconstruction of GTA 6's world, so the two share the same frame and the same scale (Notebookcheck). The effect is immediate: Los Santos, a city that felt vast in 2013, sits inside Vice City's estimated limits with space left over.
What the overlay is actually built on
The most important caveat sits under the video's opening frame. The base map is not a Rockstar document — it comes from the Community Mapping Project, the fan effort that has been assembling Leonida for years from trailers, screenshots, leaked coordinates and object placement. Rockstar has never published a map, never confirmed the project's proportions, and has not commented on the video.
The comparison is also cities only. GTA 6's world is the state of Leonida, not Vice City alone: the beaches, the Keys, the swamp and the farmland around the city are not in the overlay. And the outline traced for Los Santos excludes the rural north of GTA 5's map, which is a separate part of that game's world.
The community spotted the gaps quickly
Reaction in the thread was broadly positive — the most-upvoted comment simply reads "Animation looks fantastic, thank you" — but it did not take long for sharper eyes to push back. User u/kheeno_ pointed out that significant districts are missing from the Los Santos trace, Vinewood Hills and El Burro Heights among them, and argued that the two cities could be closer in size than the animation implies (Notebookcheck).
The creator's answer is reasonable rather than defensive: he traced the clearly recognisable urban areas, and says Vice City would still come out considerably larger once those districts are added back in. That is an argument about method, not about the conclusion — and it is the kind of exchange that only happens because the community is doing the measuring itself.
How it lines up with the official figures
The video landed in a week that had already produced the first real numbers. Rockstar's co-head of development Rob Nelson told previewers that Leonida is roughly twice the size of GTA 5's map and around three times Red Dead Redemption 2's, with Vice City itself close to double Los Santos and the built-up area around the city roughly 11 times larger (Notebookcheck). The fan overlay points in the same direction, which is a large part of why it travelled.
For context: GTA 5 shipped with Los Santos, Blaine County and a stretch of wilderness that was considered enormous in 2013, and Red Dead Redemption 2 later beat it on land area. A Leonida that doubles GTA 5 while doubling its central city is a different order of magnitude — and it raises the question Rockstar has faced since San Andreas: whether the extra ground gets filled. The Extended Look argued that it does, with dense traffic, wildlife and more than 600,000 unique NPC animations.
Why a fan animation is the best answer available
Nothing here is confirmation. The community map could be wrong in either direction, and the real measurement will only happen on November 19, when players can drive the coastline themselves. But the overlay answers the question people were actually asking — not "how many square kilometres", but "does Vice City feel like a city or like a district" — and it does so with the only map anyone has.
