Small clarification: Satellite imagery is only used where higher quality aerial photography isn’t available. For cities with full photogrammetry, a plane needs to fly over the whole area twice (the second time at 90 degrees relative to the first pass) in order to capture buildings from all sides.
To be fair, GTA also isn’t the size of Earth while using extremely high resolution satellite images as textures.
Small clarification: Satellite imagery is only used where higher quality aerial photography isn’t available. For cities with full photogrammetry, a plane needs to fly over the whole area twice (the second time at 90 degrees relative to the first pass) in order to capture buildings from all sides.