How Big is Each Block?

[BENBOBBY]

Im planning on creating a map of my local area and want it to be as scale accurate as possible. So was just wondering what size does each block in game represent roughly? Based on the sizes of the trains and trucks etc I estimate them to be about 20 metres by 20 metres? Sound reasonable?

[Alberth]

Scale is OpenTTD scale, which basically means "what works for the game". Each feature pretty much has its own scale, which is great, as for any desired scale, you can simply select the feature that fits best to proof your scale is the same as used by OpenTTD.

Aka, yes your scale fits, as would basically any other scale you care to use.

[Eddi]

the scale is distorted in a way that you can pick any randum number somewhere between 10m and 5km and find an argument why that is the "real" scale. but really, each of these numbers is incorrect in more ways than it is correct.

[This is my name]

Peace be upon you.

1 tile = 9m x 9m => based on road tile = 1m wide for each side of walkway, 2.5m wide for each road lane.

Your train tracks will have to be unbearably long, covering real-time scheduling.

Assume that the route that you want to copy in real life runs for 5 hours, your OpenTTD version of the route has to run for 5 hours.

This disregards the maintenance costs, which is arbitrary and can be changed with a type or two.

Peace be upon you.

[Pyoro]

Rather than scale it by block sizes I'd go by "number of houses"; I think, if I wanted to "accurately" rebuild a town in OTTD. It still wouldn't work, primarily because real cities just aren't like OpenTTD cities, but I think it might be more productive than figuring out a scale. Like, a typical block in Munich might be 5x10, I'd say.

[Expresso]

erm... houses are not the same size as apartment buildings. So that doesn't fit.

[Pyoro]

Yes, but roads are all the same size too, main roads and alleys and whatnot alike, and vehicles have different sizes again, and if you go by vehicle speeds and tiles covered you'll end up with something else again ... it depends on what's important to you. For me it'd be more about the shape of stuff than the actual distances (but again, with no diagonal roads and so on it's not going to be accurate anyway).

[Quast65]

Like others have said, there is no real scale in OpenTTD, it's more important that it "feels" right in the OpenTTD universe.
One thing though, buildings higher than 255 pixels will get glitches from 256 pixels and higher and also may look odd when planes are flying...