Webster, Massachusetts

This town combines mapped roads, building footprints, aerial imagery, and lidar with modeled architecture and vegetation. Its summer palette, materials and light are designed to capture Webster’s character as a driving game.

The ground and buildings

MassGIS mapping and spring 2025 aerial imagery establish the town’s layout. USGS lidar collected in 2021 supplies much of its height and roof information.

The streets

The driving network follows mapped roads, with MassDOT road information informing their appearance. The car follows a guided path with simplified turns. Classified lidar returns establish the Main Street bridge deck height; bridge structures combine published span and construction records with modeled finishes. Railroad-crossing gates and light masts follow the federal inventory, with authored hardware placement.

The architecture

5,031 residential profiles use mapped footprints, assessor styles, story counts and elevation evidence. Roofs, chimneys and eaves on 5,008 of them are fitted to the 2021 lidar, its returns shifted onto each mapped footprint; the town assessor’s street photographs supply siding, trim, shutter and door colors, porches and their roofs, posts and railings, where the doors, windows, dormers and garage doors stand, door hoods and porticos, awnings, bay windows, decks, outside stairs, solar panels, mailboxes, planting and front fences for 4,775, and whether each street has a painted center line and which side its poles stand on. 1,239 garages, sheds and other buildings are fitted to the lidar the same way, and 1,192 more keep their inferred shapes with doors facing their drives. Dated property descriptions inform 121 of those homes; historical inventory descriptions guide materials and frontage treatments for 127 profiles. Sacred Heart, First Baptist, St. Louis, St. Joseph, Reconciliation, the Kelly Library, the Samuel Slater Experience and the fire station have individually composed building forms. Town Hall and the former school have source-fitted window bays and pale trim. The schools, police and post office use separately composed masses and entrances. Main Street blocks and mill façades use dated architectural records, parcel divisions and roof evidence; ordinary shops and garages have inferred storefront details. Selected landmarks and eleven School Street properties also use public exterior photographs. Other roof shapes, opening dimensions, hidden elevations and unrecorded finishes remain interpretations. Historic descriptions and older paint colors are references; present appearance may differ.

The horizon

USGS 3DEP elevations shape the surrounding hills at their real heights. The skyline changes with your position and altitude, including Earth curvature. Beyond the detailed town, 2025 Annual NLCD land-cover and canopy estimates guide forest, field and water patterns. Representative forest clusters gradually blend into simpler distant cover. Their shapes, heights and summer colors are artistic choices, not individually surveyed trees; haze and clouds are also authored. Atmospheric refraction and current weather are not simulated.

The season

Late-summer grass, foliage, light, and finishes are artistic choices. MassGIS 2016 land cover distinguishes lawns, woods, and paved areas, with mapped roads, buildings, and water refining their boundaries. Near the streets and houses, trees stand where the 2021 lidar found their crowns, at their measured heights and spreads; farther out, woods are grouped canopy. Each tree is drawn as an evergreen or a broadleaf by what the 2025 leaf-off aerial shows at its crown; individual species are not surveyed. Grass beneath trees near homes is inferred as lawn. Sources come from different dates, so some buildings and streets may differ from Webster today.

Parking and ground finishes

Reviewed OpenStreetMap outlines and spring 2025 MassGIS aerial views refine paved lots and selected driveways. Parking bay layouts are composed for the game within those boundaries; they do not reproduce surveyed stall counts or accessible-space assignments. Continuous road markings, pavement edges and woodland-floor materials include modeled finishing choices.

People in the town

The pedestrians are animated characters authored for the game. They do not represent real people or their movements.

The railway

The Norwich Branch follows its active mapped route through town, including the river crossings and the passage beneath Mill Street. OpenStreetMap supplies the alignment and standard gauge; MassGIS and federal crossing records distinguish the active line and road crossings. Rail elevations are fitted to the modeled terrain and road surfaces. Ballast, ties, rail profiles and bridge construction are interpretations, not a railway engineering survey.

Bridges, memorials and shorelines

Historical surveys guide Memorial Beach’s iron truss and sidewalk posts. The Court of Honor, lawn howitzers, relocated Slater markers and other public memorials use dated records and photographs; small dimensions and placements remain interpretations. Cemetery stones, shoreline plants and dam fragments sit within mapped settings, with anonymous layouts and inferred details. Memorial Beach has its documented double launch and 65-foot flagpole; the DCR Lakeside launch has a single concrete strip with a locally registered water edge. The Indian Princess uses its photographed two-deck riverboat appearance and a berth visible in 2025 imagery; it is a stationary interpretation.

Roadside details

WRTA boarding-stop coordinates locate bus flags; OpenStreetMap records locate collection boxes. Stop signs and traffic lights combine OpenStreetMap controls with MassDOT sign assets and intersection-control records, retrieved September 2026. Road approaches, roadside offsets and signal hardware are modeled where the records do not survey them. Signal colors follow simplified game timing, not real controller programs. The inventories are incomplete and include older surveys; construction changes and unmapped controls may differ today. Flag and box designs and pole hardware are modeled interpretations. Selected overhead utility runs follow photographed corridor character, with inferred spacing and placement; they are not a surveyed utility map. Matched road-inventory segments distinguish earth, gravel and surface-treated pavement using inferred material tones. The Gore Road plaza’s lake-name sign uses a dated exterior reference. Playing fields and solar-site boundaries receive restrained inferred equipment. Nine aerial-registered wastewater basins preserve the surrounding real buildings; rails and small dimensions are authored.

Architectural notes and selected public exterior images guide the modeled buildings. Materials include public-domain textures from Poly Haven and ambientCG. Traffic lights follow a simplified game cycle; guided driving does not enforce signals or stop signs.

MassGIS · © OpenStreetMap contributors · USGS 3D Elevation Program · MassDOT · Massachusetts historical inventory · Historic American Engineering Record · Railroad crossing inventory · WRTA · Poly Haven license · ambientCG license