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I was wondering, if I were to run around in a world like this, how much I would need from one corner of Skyrim to the other far diagonal corner end to the other in kilometers/miles.

There is already a study on large game worlds, but a bit outdated.
It mentions Oblivion there, so it might be a reference point.

How large is the world of Skyrim in real life?
Is there a reliable method, theoretical or empirical, to measure it?

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Well other than Todd Howard saying that the world is larger than Oblivion and the largest they have ever made, I don't know of anything. – Holger Nov 30 '11 at 11:18
He would not have said that, because it is not true. Most detailed world, perhaps, but it doesn't even begin to approach the size of the map in Daggerfall. (I think Arena may have been even bigger, covering the entire Empire, but I never played it, so I'm unsure.) – Dave Sherohman Nov 30 '11 at 14:38
It's possible he's not counting Daggerfall's map as "made", as it was almost wholly procedurally generated. The other games of course use some procedural generation as well, but as tools to help artists/designers make "empty" space faster. I would be surprised if more than 0.1% of Daggerfall's area had any kind of human touch. – Joe Wreschnig Nov 30 '11 at 17:47
@Holger: I recall Todd Howard saying it's "the most ambitious project" and it has "more content than any previous game", but for game world size, the only thing he mentioned is that it's "not smaller than Oblivion". Which, for the playable area, is about right. It's roughly the same size. – Martin Sojka Nov 30 '11 at 18:59
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What that article didn't mention was FUEL which is the largest non-procedural map I've played - 14,400 square KM (5,560 square miles). It was generated from satellite data, IIRC. It took a guy from Rock, Paper, Shotgun 8 hours straight driving to circumnavigate the map: rockpapershotgun.com/2009/06/22/… – Alan B Sep 9 '12 at 19:52
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Skyrim's heightmap is rectangular and uses 119 x 94 = 11186 in-game "cells". The engine uses the same cell size as in Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas - 57.6 metres (63 yards) to the side, 3317.76 m² (3 969 square yards) of area. The full map thus has an area of about 37.1 km² (14.3 square miles). Around a quarter of this is not playable, stuck behind invisible borders.

The playable area is roughly the same as the one in Morrowind and Oblivion and less than one thousandths of Daggerfall's size.

In addition, the game features a good part of the surrounding area of Tamriel as low-quality "fake" terrain meshes.

For comparison, the heightmaps of Skyrim (upper left corner), Morrowind (upper right corner) and Oblivion (lower left corner) look as follows, to scale (courtesy of Lightwave from Bethesda's forums). Skyrim, Morrowind and Oblivion heightmaps

Most of Oblivion's heightmap is not playable, while most of Skyrim's and all of Morrowind's map can be visited in game.

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Daggerfall has procedural terrain, which is practically the same thing over and over again. Apples and oranges. – Bora Nov 30 '11 at 11:57
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@Bora: Oblivion has procedural terrain too (I can't tell for sure for Skyrim and I don't remember for Morrowind). The only difference is that it's "backed" in the editor, not generated by the game on the spot. – Martin Sojka Nov 30 '11 at 12:01
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@Martin well the problem is a mountain that can be 'walked up' in 1-2 hours is really just a hill, can't be called a mountain :P – spartacus Nov 30 '11 at 12:57
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@MartinSojka alternatively - use a horse! – Raven Dreamer♦ Nov 30 '11 at 14:12
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Of course, none of this takes into account the amount of space provided by dungeons/caves/etc – Chris Rasys Nov 30 '11 at 17:16
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Well, if you take Blackreach into account, Skyrim is a tad larger than either Morrowind or Oblivion, seeing as Blackreach itself is about the size of a single hold, if not even larger.

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