Our consoles are now packed with enormous, richly detailed 3D worlds to explore-and they just keep getting more expansive. By one calculation, GTA 5 is over six times larger than GTA 3; another estimate puts Elden Ring's map at a massive 79 playable square kilometers. That got us wondering, which game is the biggest?
Turns out, there's no clear answer. Publishers generally won't talk specifics, perhaps out of fear their in-game worlds will seem small in comparison to others. Of course, it isn't the size that matters, it's what you do with it that counts-diminutive maps often offer a more realistic and compelling experience. But that hasn't stopped fans from speculating, so we trawled the gamers here for the most credible calculations and authoritative claims to create this visualization of virtual real estate.
I USED TO WORRY about using too much electricity.
If a family member forgot to turn off the AC, I'd snap at them: "What, you want the planet to cook extra fast?" If I found lights left on overnight, I'd fume.
I was insufferable. In my defense, I'd been worrying about climate change ever since Jim Hansen's 1988 landmark congressional testimony. With every blast of AC, I knew more carbon was being pumped into the atmosphere. So I turned into an energy miser. I'd go around the house turning off lights; if no one else was home, I'd leave the AC off, even on blazing days.
Then something fundamentally shifted my psychology around electricity: I installed solar panels on my house.
I quickly found myself awash in energy. The installers had predicted the panels would produce 100 percent of what my Brooklyn, New York, a household needed. They underestimated: I generate a lot of net surpluses. In a 24-hour period, my panels produce as much as 50 percent more juice than I need. I'm saving about $2,000 a year, so I'll amortize the cost of the array in seven years; then the electricity is damn near free.
This story is from the October 2022 edition of WIRED.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the October 2022 edition of WIRED.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
RUSSIAN, GO HOME
WHEN MY COUNTRY WENT TO WAR, I FACED A CHOICE: Flee to a world where the truth might kill me - or seek peace in censored oblivion.
The Fateful Eight
THE STORY BEHIND THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL TECHNOLOGICAL PAPER IN RECENT HISTORY.
Can the Internet's Greatest Authenticity Machine Survive Wall Street?
When thousands of subreddits went dark in protest last summer, it exposed the tension at the core of Reddit - on the eve of the company's IPO. Now that synthetic media is flooding the internet, does the web's most reliably human forum represent a gold mine for investors, or an old-fashioned dumpster fire?
The Unnerving Presence of Javier Bardem
He's known for playing fanatics and murderous psychopaths. In real life, he loves his wife (and Brad Pitt) and cries during E.T.
HAPPY HAUNTING
IN A CHARMING game called This Discord Has Ghosts in It, up to 15 participants at a time gather in a Discord server that has been reimagined as a haunted house. (Of course.) Inside lies a maze of (chat) rooms where each player takes the role of either an eponymous spirit or a paranormal investigator.
THE MYTH OF METAL
How I became a Python programmer - and learned to love our abstract world.
SO YOU WANT TO REWIRE BRAINS
There's a lot to like about brain-computer interfaces, those sci-fi-sounding devices that jack into your skull and turn neural signals into software commands. Experimental BCIS help paralyzed people communicate, use the internet, and move prosthetic limbs.
FOR GIANT LIZARDS, PLEASE HOLD
The sounds of Slack have a secret history.
WOMEN AT THE BOTTOM OF THE WORLD
They go to Antarctica with dreams of studying the unknown. What they discover there is the stuff of nightmares.
THE NERD-KING VIBES OF JENSEN HUANG
The Nvidia CEO turned a graphics-card company into a trillion-dollar AI behemoth. Now he wants to transform the rest of the world-health care, robotics, autonomous driving, the works.