Isometric San Francisco

Following the success of Isometric NYC, it was probably only a matter of time before another city received the same pixel-art treatment. Now Isopolis - San Francisco has recreated the City by the Bay as a sprawling isometric world that looks as though it has been lifted straight from the golden age of SimCity.

From the skyscrapers of the Financial District to the city's famous hills, bridges and waterfront, San Francisco has been transformed into a giant retro cityscape that invites endless exploration. SimCity fans will immediately recognize the aesthetic. The map captures San Francisco as a dense tapestry of tiny buildings, winding streets, parks and piers, all rendered in a consistent pixel-art style. 

Like Isometric NYC, this project relies heavily on AI. Rather than using conventional 3D building models, the map was created by streaming Google's Photorealistic 3D Tiles into a Three.js application. Those richly textured models were then used to generate training data for an AI model, with hundreds of pixel-art images created and painstakingly curated to establish a consistent visual style. According to the developer, achieving that consistency required extensive manual experimentation and selection, even with the assistance of AI coding tools.

Unlike the real San Francisco, Isopolis is almost entirely flat. Although the developer used Google's photorealistic 3D tiles as the source material, the finished map doesn't attempt to preserve the city's dramatic changes in elevation. That is probably an inevitable compromise. The clean, consistent pixel-art style - and the fixed isometric viewpoint (no rotation) - would make faithfully representing San Francisco's famously steep streets extremely difficult.

As a result, Isopolis - San Francisco like the original Isometric NYC works less as a geographical model and more as an affectionate reimagining of the city. Like the original SimCity, it captures the character of an urban landscape rather than every aspect of its physical geography. It isn't a map designed for navigation, but a richly detailed illustration that encourages you to zoom in, explore familiar neighbourhoods and appreciate just how much personality can be packed into a retro pixel-art city.