GTA 6 Fans Have Built Their Own Vice City
Waiting for GTA 6 has become an exercise in patience.
Rockstar has shown plenty of impressive footage, but players are still waiting for a deeper look at the massive world of Leonida.
Until then, the community has found another way to explore it.
A fan-made GTA 6 map has been recreated inside Cities: Skylines 2, turning publicly available trailers and screenshots into an interactive 3D environment that players can actually explore. The project isn’t an official Rockstar release, but it gives fans a fascinating approximation of what Vice City and the surrounding regions could look like.
And because it’s built inside a city-building game, you’re not simply looking at a static map.
You can actually move through the recreated environment.
This Isn’t the Actual GTA 6 Map
Let’s get the most important clarification out of the way.
This is not GTA 6 running inside Cities: Skylines 2.
It isn’t an extracted version of Rockstar’s game files, and it doesn’t represent an official map released by Rockstar Games.
Instead, creator Noasden used publicly available GTA 6 material, including trailers and screenshots, to recreate portions of the world within Cities: Skylines 2. The project also relied heavily on data from the community-created State of Leonida map project.
That distinction matters because the recreation inevitably contains assumptions.
Some locations are known from official footage.
Others have been reconstructed based on visual clues, community research, or interpretation.
So while the map can offer a useful preview of GTA 6’s world, it shouldn’t be treated as a perfect representation of Rockstar’s final game.
Vice City Is the Star of the Recreation
The most interesting part of the project is obviously Vice City.
Rockstar is returning to the iconic setting for GTA 6, but the new game isn’t simply recreating the version players remember from 2002.
This is a much larger modern interpretation.
The Cities: Skylines 2 recreation attempts to capture that scale by building out urban areas and surrounding locations based on the information currently available.
Players can explore recreated streets and districts from a 3D perspective instead of simply looking at a conventional top-down map.
That makes the project particularly interesting for GTA fans who have spent months studying every frame of Rockstar’s trailers.
You can finally get a better sense of how those individual locations might connect.
The Map Goes Beyond Vice City
The recreation isn’t limited to the city itself.
It also includes areas such as Vice Beach, Leonida Keys and Port Gellhorn, giving players a glimpse at the broader scale of GTA 6’s open world.
That’s important because one of the biggest questions surrounding GTA 6 has always been the size and variety of its map.
Rockstar has already shown that the game will extend beyond the familiar urban environment.
There are beaches.
Wetlands.
Rural areas.
Small communities.
Highways.
And other environments that help make Leonida feel like an entire state rather than simply another version of Vice City.
The fan recreation attempts to reflect that broader structure.
Cities: Skylines 2 Is Surprisingly Well Suited for This
At first, using a city-building game to recreate GTA 6 might sound strange.
But Cities: Skylines 2 actually makes a lot of sense for this type of project.
The game is built around roads, traffic, urban infrastructure, buildings and large-scale environments.
It also has systems for traffic and dynamic weather, which help make the recreation feel more alive than a static map would.
That doesn’t turn it into GTA 6.
You aren’t suddenly getting Rockstar’s characters, missions, combat or driving mechanics.
But as a visualization tool, it’s surprisingly effective.
Instead of asking, “How big does this area look on a map?” you can actually walk around the recreated streets and see how the environment fits together.
You Can Download the Recreation
For players who already own Cities: Skylines 2, the project is available through the game’s modding ecosystem.
According to Notebookcheck’s report, the GTA 6-inspired map can be found using ID 153426.
That makes this more than an interesting collection of screenshots.
You can actually load the recreation yourself and explore it.
Of course, the experience won’t replicate GTA 6.
There won’t be Jason and Lucia running around.
There won’t be Rockstar’s mission scripting.
There won’t be GTA’s driving physics or its detailed NPC behavior.
What you’re getting is essentially a fan-built geographic interpretation of Leonida inside another game’s engine.
And honestly, that’s still pretty impressive.
How Accurate Is the GTA 6 Fan Map?
This is where expectations need to be managed.
The recreation is impressive, but it has a reasonable margin of error because nobody outside Rockstar has access to the finished GTA 6 map.
The creator is working from available evidence.
That means trailers and screenshots can establish certain landmarks and roads, but they can’t necessarily reveal every part of the surrounding world.
Some areas may be highly accurate.
Others may be educated guesses.
And some details could change before the final game launches.
That’s why it’s better to think of the project as a visual interpretation of GTA 6’s world, rather than a definitive map leak.
The Community Has Been Mapping GTA 6 for Months
This isn’t the first time GTA fans have tried to reconstruct Leonida.
The community has already produced detailed interactive maps using information from Rockstar’s trailers and screenshots.
One earlier project created a top-down interactive representation containing locations, roads, landmarks and points of interest, while the Cities: Skylines 2 version takes the idea into a fully explorable 3D environment.
That’s a good example of how intense the GTA 6 speculation has become.
Fans aren’t simply waiting for Rockstar to reveal information.
They’re studying individual frames, comparing landmarks, identifying roads, matching real-world locations and building their own interpretations.
The Cities: Skylines 2 recreation is essentially the next step in that process.
It Gives Fans a Better Sense of GTA 6’s Scale
One of the most interesting things about the recreation is how it makes the geography easier to understand.
Screenshots can make an open world look enormous without explaining how locations connect.
A playable recreation changes that.
You can travel between different districts and see how urban areas transition into beaches, rural locations and other parts of Leonida.
The result gives fans a better appreciation for the scale Rockstar appears to be targeting.
The actual GTA 6 map could still differ significantly from the fan version, but the recreation demonstrates just how much information Rockstar’s existing footage already contains.
GTA 6’s November Release Is Getting Closer
There’s also less time left to wait than there was when the project first began.
Rockstar currently lists November 19, 2026 as GTA 6’s release date for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. The date was moved from the previously announced May 26, 2026 launch window, with Rockstar saying the additional time was needed to deliver the level of polish expected from the game.
That means the Cities: Skylines 2 recreation is ultimately a temporary substitute.
Once GTA 6 finally arrives, players will no longer need a fan-made approximation to explore Vice City.
They’ll have the real thing.
But until then, projects like this are a clever way for the community to keep itself entertained.
While fans are busy reconstructing Leonida and trying to understand just how large GTA 6’s world will be, PC players still have another question hanging over them: how demanding will Rockstar’s next open-world game actually be? We’ve already broken down our GTA 6 PC system requirements predictions and what players may need when the PC version eventually arrives.
Could the Fan Map Become More Accurate?
Potentially.
Every new trailer, screenshot or official piece of GTA 6 information gives map creators more material to work with.
If Rockstar reveals additional parts of Leonida, fan-made recreations could be updated to incorporate those details.
That’s particularly interesting because the Cities: Skylines 2 version is already built around information gathered from official footage and community mapping projects.
A future update could therefore make the recreation increasingly detailed.
But there will always be a limit.
Until GTA 6 launches, nobody outside Rockstar can completely verify the final map.
The Best Part Is That Fans Built Something Playable
There’s something very GTA about the situation.
Rockstar hasn’t shown players everything they want to see.
So the community decided to build its own version.
It isn’t perfect.
It isn’t official.
And it certainly isn’t GTA 6.
But it turns months of trailer analysis and map speculation into something players can actually explore.
For anyone who has spent way too much time studying GTA 6 screenshots, that’s probably enough to make this worth checking out.
Final Verdict
The Cities: Skylines 2 GTA 6 map recreation isn’t a leaked version of Rockstar’s upcoming game, but it’s one of the more interesting fan projects to emerge from the enormous GTA 6 community.
Using trailers, screenshots and community map data, the creator has built a 3D environment featuring areas inspired by Vice City, Vice Beach, Leonida Keys and Port Gellhorn.
The biggest appeal is simple: you can explore it yourself.
That gives fans a better sense of how GTA 6’s world could be structured while we wait for Rockstar to reveal more.
Just remember that the recreation is an interpretation, not an official representation of the final map.
With GTA 6 currently scheduled for November 19, 2026, the wait is getting shorter.
Until then, this might be one of the closest ways to take a virtual walk through a fan-built version of Vice City.
FAQs
No. It is a fan-made recreation built using publicly available GTA 6 trailers, screenshots and community mapping information.
Yes. The recreation is available as a Cities: Skylines 2 map and can be explored from a 3D perspective.
The recreation includes Vice City and surrounding areas such as Vice Beach, Leonida Keys and Port Gellhorn.
It is based on publicly available footage and community research, but it is not guaranteed to match Rockstar’s final map. Some areas involve interpretation and therefore contain a margin of error.
GTA 6 is currently scheduled to launch on November 19, 2026, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.


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