Developer Creates Pixel-Art Isometric Map of 1,300 Square Miles of the SF Bay Area

A developer shared an isometric pixel-art map covering about 1,300 square miles of the San Francisco Bay Area on Hacker News. The map was built from Google Photorealistic 3D Tiles, which were transformed into a cohesive pixel style, and it highlights landmarks such as Apple Park, the Palace of Fine Arts, and UC Berkeley. The project used Nano Banana 2 and fine-tuned LoRA models based on Qwen-Image-Edit and Klein 4B, with the smaller open-source model reproducing the style at roughly a quarter of the cost. The creator estimated that producing the map with Nano Banana 2 alone would have cost around $7,000, and credited the concept to the Isometric NYC project.