Venice

Venice is truly one-of-a-kind city. I’ve ‘been’ there almost 8 years ago when returning from Italy by train (long story involving lost plane connection), but it was continental part then (Mestre) and only for 2 hours. For some reason I thought that the rest of the city looks the same, just with some canals here and there. Couldn’t be more wrong. Basically, it’s more of a museum than a city. There are no roads, no cars, no buildings younger than XVIII century. All municipal services use boats (police, hospitals, post, transport). There are other cities that are sometimes named Venice of the North/East/West. I don’t think they’re even close. Some random photos:

More photos from Venice here, Verona here.

Old comments

admin 2010-05-04 23:41:14

Not sure about Thief, but I think Assassin’s Creed 2 team went there for ‘research’ :)

Jonathan Hartley 2010-05-04 09:55:06

I have no idea if this story is true but I once read somewhere that when the team for ‘Thief: The Dark Project’ were getting underway, the lead designers weren’t happy with the way there levels were shaping up. Finally, after a couple of reboots, they took the level designers to Venice, and said “See..? like this!”

Riddlemaster 2010-04-12 06:58:39

I like the P1020167 photo :) and yeah ambient occlusion (and level of detail - DX11 tessellation?) on the sculpture is great.

admin 2010-04-10 16:21:42

I was actually pleasantly surprised. It was probably thanks to the time of year, but it didn’t stink, I imagine it may be worse during summer :)

mad 2010-04-09 01:20:17

Venice is lucky that pictures don’t show the SMELL of the city ;)

ed 2010-04-07 20:35:55

Nice ambient oclusion on the photo with sculpture :)