Rockstar Video Game ‘L.A. Noir’ Uses Airplane Photography

LA Noire

Robert Spence was not your average photographer. With a studio thousands of feet up in the air, Spence snapped his trademark bird’s-eye views of 1930s Los Angeles by perching himself on the wing of a biplane with a 45-pound camera.

But Spence’s images — and his tales of daring — are now reaching an entirely new audience in the 21st century with the release of the Rockstar video game ‘L.A. Noire.’ To create the game’s realistic environment, developers used Spence’s photographs in combination with state-of-the-art city mapping technology to depict Los Angeles as it appeared in the 1940s.

Spence’s photographs, currently housed in the Spence Collection at The Benjamin and Gladys Thomas Air Photo Archives at UCLA, allowed game-makers incredibly detailed images of Los Angeles that allowed them to sculpt a realistic city.

“They showed us the density of the traffic and the pedestrians, the trolley car routes,” said production designer Simon Wood. “They showed us different mosaics and sidewalk patterns that we couldn’t make out from the other street photo reference materials. They showed the different types of rooftops and tar roof styles and air conditioner units.”

According to Air and Space Magazine, Spence was paid $10 by Hollywood’s rich and famous for each death-defying picture.

Check out more of the daredevil photographer’s images at the University of Southern California website. All photos below courtesy of the California Historical Society Collection, USC Libraries Special Collections.