This is awesome.
Question: as some one fairly new to SR I'm looking at Seattle there are those two huge buildings that you added (as far as I can tell), I'm figuring one is Aztechnology and the other is Renraku. Are there loads of buildings that big in Seattle? I know there is probably no precise answer to this but I'm trying to get a feel for what the city might actually look like now.
That said, this is a great resource, thanks for putting the time in.
Firstly, thank you
Short answer: No, there are not loads of buildings as big as the ACHE and Aztechnology Complex in Seattle.
Longer answer:
The two buildings are the Aztechnology Pyramid and the ACHE. Their width, length, and height are accurate to about 5 meters according to their statistics in the 1st edition Seattle Sourcebook (SS). However the angle of ascent is guessed at. Based on the given stats for the ACHE, I cannot see how to get it to match the artist rendition on the cover of Seattle 2072.
There are a "few" other buildings/complexes that are "big" (such as Fuchi's compound of "Seven skyscrapers, each of a different height, encircle the central building." [SS pg 43] that's located at 21st Ave South & Massachusetts Street [haven't found current status of this complex though, probably NeoNET owned, but no canon that I've found yet] and the MCT Complex on "Martin Luther King Jr. Way & Sixth-eighth Avenue South...Six black and silver skyscrapers stand at the center of this corporate complex, towering above the other buildings along the south shore of Lake Washington" [Seattle 2072, pg 56].) in addition to all the other skyscrapers. But I don't recall any level of detailed specifics on par with the two arcologies.
But the Azzie Pyramid and the Renraku Arcology both had their own sections/chapters in the original SS, putting them on par with the districts (Tacoma, Auburn, Everette, Redmond, etc.).
The SS Renraku Arcology has "Giant of the Seattle Skyline" as its subtitle, lists its dimensions as 780m x 650m by 969 meters tall (when completed), and an estimated final population of permanent residents of 92,000. In the description it goes on to say, "[people] will be impressed by the size of the ninth-largest building in the world." (as of 2050, natch).
The Aztechnology Complex's section subtitle in SS is "Aztec Glory in Seattle," with "Complex Dimensions: 500 meters by 500 meters (Main Building, 195 meters by 195 meters and 300 meters tall)," and has 5,000 permanent residents.
So it's safe to assume that these two buildings are the exception rather than the norm.
For comparison, the width of the Burj Dubai is about 160 meters and stands just over 800 meters tall.
http://synclaire.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/tallest_buildings.pngI'm in the process of creating ESRI shapefiles of Shadowrun nations, locations, hotspots, etc. Anyone with GIS mapping software would be able to use it. The kmz files that Fizzy has on here are nice because Google Earth is free and probably more proliferous than expensive software suites such as Arcview. However the shapefiles can nail down more background data and my gaming group loves the addition thus far.
Would love to see those ESRI files, Argent, even if only screen captures and what not. I did a good amount of looking into GIS mapping software and yeah...money is the barrier, so I decided to go with Google Earth and that way both the files and software are free and open to anyone to use (so long as they have a computer and internet access to download them, of course).
My personal GM goal is to get a small projector so I can throw it up on a screen during game rather than having the group crowd around the monitor.
