The Complete Guide to Russian Car and Seasonal Metas
By BarrBarrBinks (finbarricade on discord)
Introduction
This guide is intended to increase the knowledge of Russia of the general playerbase. It is a very complex country that can be quite hard to region guess depending on the round, but certain locations can be guessed accurately with very little info just based off of the car and month of coverage. I will go through these in this guide and hopefully you’ll get some insane region guesses as a result of this because there is a surprising amount of “free 5ks” if you know some meta.
For this guide the main focus is going to be meta that are related to coverage and where the coverage itself actually is. I will occasionally mention some other region guessing tips but it won’t be the main focus; however I might make another guide for that in the future. Also I use Oblast and Federal Subject interchangeably even though they’re different since Federal Subject is just too long. Most of the information mentioned in the “The Cars” section should be present in the “The Months” section so technically you can just skip “The Cars” if you’re already familiar with how car meta works.
Also something to note about this guide is that due to how long this guide is I don’t recommend just reading it in full with the hopes of somehow absorbing all of the information. I think it is probably best used by playing a balanced Russia and having this guide open while you’re playing. At the end I have also included JSONs with all of the data that I’ve put into this doc. If you prefer to learn through using them instead of reading.
Overview of Coverage
Most federal subjects of Russia have official Google Street View coverage as can be seen on the following map (Literally a useless map but L Bozo to The Chukotka Autonomous Okrug).
And this map showing where exactly the coverage is should also be helpful (image is from https://geo.emily.bz/coverage-dates/russia which greatly helped while I was researching for this guide).
As can be seen from the image above, each federal subject has a different % of land that received coverage. This can be useful in eliminating certain oblasts if the location isn’t a major highway.
Moscow obviously has the highest but from the image below it is clear to see that Google really likes Tula, Bryansk and Belgorod compared to their neighbours. Meaning if you’re on a random tiny road in Russia, then these oblasts are way more likely than other surrounding oblasts.
Knowing the meta behind coverage patterns is quite useful and I would definitely recommend paying attention to this while you play Russia as this can definitely help region guess.
The maps below show my somewhat arbitrary definition of the amount of coverage in gen 3 and gen 4 when only considering the newest available coverage.
Some things to note about these maps are:
- Oblasts will still be marked as only having one road even if that road happens to pass through a city or a town so long as there isn’t multiple roads covered in those towns or cities
- Kirov actually has one road + spill with Komi (which is mega-cringe for oblast streaking).
- Nizhny has one city + spill april coverage with Vladimir (which is the bane of my existence).
- Mari El shows spill on Google's borders but when viewing the location it still says it's part of Tatarstan so that is marked as No Coverage on the map.
- The range of % coverage for “decent coverage” in generation 3 is quite broad, I would recommend just checking out the lines for official coverage on https://map-making.app/ or https://sv-map.netlify.app/
There’s definitely more impactful sections of this guide but the biggest takeaway from these maps is that random small roads in gen 3 are most likely to be found in Tula, Bryansk, Belgorod, Moscow, Vladimir, Ivanovo, Chelyabinsk and Leningrad. Obviously this is in no way guaranteed but it's something to keep in mind. The maps also show that you should probably not send Komi, Omsk and Tomsk when the location is generation 3. I will go into stuff like this in more detail in each generations specific section
Generation 4
I’m going to cover generation 4 before generation 3 because the seasonal and car meta is much simpler. All of the 2021 coverage in Russia is generation 4, it spans from February to September, in the section for “The Months” I will give some pointers to distinguish these months from each other (for the most part) which will greatly help with region guessing as specific months are typically found in specific areas.
The general rule of thumb that floats around the community is “winter coverage south” which for the most part is true but hopefully this guide will be able to bring you to the point of being able to determine the month within winter and thus narrowing down the region significantly, allowing for much more accurate guessing.
The section ‘The Cars’ is more of a reference for what to look for when looking for generation 4 car meta. A lot of example locs will be provided for you to examine so that you know what to look for. If you are already familiar with what google google cars look like in Russia you can probably just skip this section as where the cars are located will also be presented on a month by month basis in the section about the months.
The Cars
This section of the guide is mainly to introduce you to what each google car looks like, region guessing based off of this info will be in a later section.
There are 6 (maybe 7) gen 4 cars in Russia. In descending order of how many oblasts they can be found in they are: no car (51), red car (19), no car with antenna (13), black car (13), white car(9), black car antenna (3) and finally ‘the maybe I’m delusional or maybe it’s only one oblast’ car (1).
When talking about a specific car colour the colour appears at the front of the car. If there is an antenna it will appear at the back of the car but note that it can disappear and reappear with moving. It is also important to note that shadows and the road texture itself can potentially hide any visible google car or make an invisible google car appear to have a colour.
No Car No Antenna
When the front centre of the google car has no visible colour.
Example Locs:
Dagestan Dagestan 2 Dagestan 3
Rostov Kabardino-Balkarian Krasnodar
Komi Arkhangelsk Arkhangelsk 2
Map
Notes about the invisible google car:
- Probably the least useful google car in terms of ‘free insane guesses’ but it's useful to know if you can combine it with some region guessing. For example if you think you’re in Tomsk then you know with an invisible google car it must be in the western half, the same applies to Khanty-Mansi.
- Murmansk and Magadan are both marked on the map as “invisible”, however this isn’t totally true.
- Murmansk occasionally has a visible black google car but it seems to appear and disappear at random.
- Magadan seems to have some locs that are white car and some that are invisible car. This seems to be quite inconsistent but just keep it in mind.
- The “invisible car with antenna” can appear identical to invisible car no antenna on about 30% of locs due to the antenna not appearing. So if you see no google car then keep in mind that it can still potentially be those locs (map shown in the section for ‘No Car With Antenna’).
Red Car
When the front centre of the google car is visibly red
Example Locs
Yamalo-Nenets Khanty-Mansi Tyumen
Map
Notes about the red google car:
- Significantly more useful than the invisible google car because it’s in way less areas and more importantly is in areas that look relatively distinct from each other.
- Note that 100% of the gen 4 in Kemerovo, Yamalo-Nenets, Krasnoyarsk and Irkutsk are red car.
- There are significant portions of Tomsk, Khanty-Mansi, Penza and Tatarstan with red car.
- The red car coverage in Buryatia is exclusively located near Ulan-Ude.
No Car With Antenna
Front of the car has no visible colour and there is a short antenna visible at the back.
The Antenna can also occasionally appear bent
Example locs: (you can also try moving to see how the antenna can disappear at random)
Chelyabinsk Bashkortostan Sverdlovsk
Yaroslavl Moscow City Moscow Oblast
Map
Perm Chelyabinsk
Notes about the invisible google car with an antenna:
- It is important to note that around 30% of the time the antenna won’t be visible.
- Even though only Moscow, Chelyabinsk and Perm received complete urban coverage with antenna you can still find antenna in urban locations along the road from Yaroslavl to Chelyabinsk. So if you’re in a town but have a feeling that it might be a major road that passes through the town then consider sending one of those oblasts instead of just Chelyabinsk/Moscow/Perm.
- Since the car is driving in the direction of Chelyabinsk from Yaroslavl to potentially rule out this road if you’re driving west.
- All of the coverage from Moscow-Chelyabinsk and north of it is summer, while all of the coverage south of Moscow is early-spring to winter (April - February).
- May coverage with antenna can be found in Moscow itself.
- In the city of Shakty north east of Rostov-on-Don the colour of the google car appears to frequently change from black to invisible. This is either me being visually-impaired or the city was covered twice by two different cars (not sure which is more likely 💀).
Black Car No Antenna
When the front of the car is visibly black with no antenna at the back of the car.
Example locs:
Stavropol Kabardino-Balkarian North Ossetia-Alania Republic
Map
Notes about black car no antenna:
- Apparently black car can be found in Murmansk and Vladikavkaz but I am unable to find locations. So keep in mind with a seemingly black car and a northern then consider Murmansk over other oblasts.
- Black car winter with mountains south should be Vladikavkaz. If mountains are southwest then it should be Nalchik.
- Black car can be very hard to see on certain road textures (commonly on the M11).
- There is a slight chance that I’m skill issued and that it isn’t black on the M11 but side roads nearby have black car so it is likely that the M11 has it too.
White Car
When the front of the car is visibly white with no antenna
Example locs:
Map
Notes on white google car:
- White car can be extremely hard to see at times (especially in Samara Oblast) but is very useful if you can see it.
- White car in the Sakha Republic starts in Berkakit (a tiny bit of non-white car can be sporadically found above it).
- White car in Sakha + Magadan is generally hard to see but a lot of it is either unique landscape with Siberian Larches and/or has extremely foggy coverage.
- Most of white car in western Russia is May coverage.
Black Car With Antenna
When the front of the google car is visibly black and an antenna is usually visible at the back.
Example locs:
Moscow Oblast Smolensk Smolensk 2
Map
Notes on black car with antenna:
- 50% of the coverage in Bryansk (the city) is an invisible car with an antenna.
- Shakhty (north of Rostov-on-Don) has a wide variety of google cars, it can have red car, invisible car with antenna and also black car with no antenna.
- From my observations black car with an antenna should be exclusive to Moscow Oblast and not Moscow City.
- Chelyabinsk and Perm mapping of black is very approximate as it is rare and usually hard to see
‘The Maybe I’m Delusional or Maybe It’s Only One Oblast’ Car 💀
This car that may or may not exist can be found exclusively near Elista (in The Republic of Kalmykia (+ a tiny bit of spill into Rostov)). It is visually quite similar to black car and invisible car (sometimes 💀) but I’m still including it as a separate car because it looks ever so slightly different, even though it is quite likely that I am insane.
Conclusion
There are 6 (or 7 💀) generation 4 google cars in Russia. Each have quite specific regions that they can be found in which greatly helps with region guessing the country. Below are images that cram all of the data into one.
Obviously the information provided in the above map mightn’t seem the most useful as there is a significant range for each car but I will break it down by month in the next section. This will leave quite small areas for each car if you are able to determine the month.
Before we move on just a quick note on the most important aspect of each car.
- Black car (with or without antenna) is always west of Chelyabinsk.
- Gen 4 with antenna is also always west of Chelyabinsk.
- Red car spring/summer is east of Tyumen. Red car winter is west of Tyumen.
- White car summer coverage is Sakha or Magadan. In May it is Penza-Lipetsk + Moscow.
- Elista car is in Elista 💀
The Months
Generation 4 coverage in Russia consists of 8 months; spanning from February to September. February and September have the least coverage with July and August having the most coverage. Since Russia is located in the Northern Hemisphere February and March appear like winter; April and May like spring, June-August are the summer months. September is when the leaves start to turn yellow as autumn/fall begin. In general the rule of “winter coverage south” or “winter coverage west” is pretty good.
Another simple rule to remember is that Google started covering the south in February and moved up the country month by month. Meaning that the majority of the summer coverage is north of Moscow and the majority of the winter coverage is south of it. This is obviously very general but I’ll go into more detail in the next sections.
For any given loc the month can be narrowed down into one of 5 groups. These are February+March, April, May, June+July, August+September. Obviously this isn’t doable every single round especially since some August locations might have been covered in the first week of August which would make them appear more like July.
I’m going to cover each month individually with the exception of June and July because as far as I’m aware there is no way to distinguish the two in most locations. As a result of these 5 groups; if you are able to distinguish which month group it is, theoretically this should on average cut down the possible locations fivefold, this combined with the car meta we went through in the previous section can allow you to narrow down the region significantly and some combinations can give easy 5ks.
One final important note before we move onto each month individually is that it is important to realise that different months will look different depending how far north or south they are as the further north you go the colder it should get. Same thing applies to coastal areas being warmer in winter. For months where this is important (for example Dagestan April coverage looks more similar to central May coverage than central April) I will go into more detail but this is just something to keep in mind for all months.
February
February coverage isn’t that common in Russia. It is located in only 4 oblasts + a tiny bit of spill into Adygea. As a result of all of the coverage being essentially max south (Rostov is the furthest north February coverage) it all appears the same temperature-wise.
The image below depicts the typical February gen 4 location. February is categorised by trees with essentially zero leaves (with the obvious exception of evergreen trees). Green grass is relatively rare and snow is common. Meaning most of the time you will just see dirt and/or snow. Visually it can be quite similar to March coverage in the south and even in more northern Oblasts (northern Rostov, Volgograd + Voronezh) and even the April coverage in Saratov can be visually similar.
Here are some example locs of February coverage:
A146/E115, Krasnodar Krai (this road has some of the most snow in all of Russia)
Chernoerkovskaya, Krasnodar Krai
Notes about February coverage:
- As can be seen from the above map the majority of February coverage has 0 google car meta with the exception of Rostov which can have a red car or else an invisible car with an antenna.
- All of these areas can have snow of varying levels although I would say that if there is an abundance of snow then Krasnodar>Astrakhan>Stavropol>Rostov.
- Keep in mind that since March can have snow (and in some cases more than February) the ordered list above won’t be that useful (I will go into snow coverage in more detail later into this guide where I won’t be using the month but simply how much snow there is).
- Here are some region guessing tips for February coverage: Rostov and Krasnodar are quite flat in places; Krasnodar if it has hills, they will be south and Rostov will have hills north (rule of thumb, not guaranteed). The city of Stavropol is built into hills and Astrakhan can look like Mars 💀
March
March coverage can be found in basically every place that February coverage can be found in with some additional areas further north. In the areas that also have February it is quite hard to distinguish March from February but typically there would be slightly less grass/leaves and slightly more snow in February. Generally the further north in March the more snow there is. Because of this snow is super common in northern Rostov, and the entirety of Volgograd and Voronezh. Since March has a bigger range of latitude that it can found at, two example images are found below. The first one being max south and the second one being Voronezh.
Here are some example locs of March Coverage (in order of increasing latitude)
As can be seen from these locations, the further south locations have more grass and as you reach the northernmost March coverage there is essentially 0 grass and snow is common.
Map
March coverage in Rostov has a wide range of google cars
Notes about March coverage:
- As can be seen from the above maps, March coverage has a decent amount of Google car meta; much of this is in Rostov. If you think it feels southern and if you think it could be March (or even February) then Rostov is always decently likely..
- A lot of Google car meta can be seen in the cities in the Central Caucasus. Black car can be found in Stavropol and Pyatigorsk as well as north east of Nalchik and downtown Mozdok. I have also heard about black car potentially being present in Vladikavkaz but I haven’t seen it myself. Due to how far south these places are, you can typically see at least some grass which is very rare further north in March.
- Snow in march coverage is most common in Voronezh, Volgograd and Rostov but can be found in most of the coverage.
April
April has quite the different distribution from March and February so it’s very useful if you can learn to tell the difference. The majority of April coverage will have some grass and little-no leaves on trees (not including evergreen). This is a general rule but doesn’t apply everywhere, April probably has the biggest diversity in what it looks like just because it spans such a variety of latitudes. Saratov looks way more like March than April, having more snow than basically every other oblast. It is very similar to Voronezh. Dagestan is extremely green and other southern places have decent amounts of grass in April.
Ryazan with some grass but still very few leaves
Saratov still has a lot of snow coverage even though it's April
Dagestan doesn't appear anywhere nearly as wintery as more northern April coverage
In the central Caucasus it can be quite green but typically Dagestan will be the most green April
However the mountains of Dagestan are still quite green
As you can see from the map below. April coverage is concentrated between Belarus and eastern Tatarstan (Kazan’s Oblast) without that much variance in latitude.
All of the April antenna is situated on the western border or in Voronezh.
Most of the April red car is located in Penza or Tatarstan with the exception of some spills and Lipetsk which we saw in the previous map.
It is useful to know that all of the southern April coverage is in the eastern half of the Caucasus. Dagestan is also greener than all other April coverage (except in the desert)
Notes on April coverage:
- White car April coverage can be found downtown Penza and Tambov.
- Black car april can be found north and west of the Volga river in Tatarstan as well as in roughly half of the coverage of the town of Georgiyevsk in Stavropol Krai.
- Snow is extremely common in Saratov, but can still be found (albeit rarely) in Lipetsk and Oryol. I have also found that of the northern April coverage
- Of the northern April coverage, Smolensk, Bryansk, Ryazan and Samara are the greenest, possibly because they were covered in late April.
- It might not be clear from the maps above but in April, Bryansk (the city) will be a mix of black car with antenna and no car with antenna.
- Even though red car is in multiple oblasts on most urban red car locations I would send Lipetsk as the other red car coverage is more rural.
May
May is in my opinion probably the best month to get in generation 4 Russia. It doesn’t have that much coverage and there is a decent amount of car meta. Most of the places with no car meta / the same car are usually quite distinct from each other visually and small enough in quantity to be able to cover all possibilities with 2 or 3 guesses in team duels. May coverage in Russia is characterised by a decent amount of grass with trees that have a decent amount of leaves on them , typically with a slightly yellow appearance which can sometimes make it appear like autumn coverage.
An example of typical May coverage with a decent number of leaves on trees.
There can be a decent range of how much grass and leaves there are depending on the loc.
The same goes for the coverage east of Kamyshin, Volgograd
Map
In the above maps you can see that red car May coverage is exclusively east. Both areas are quite hilly with a lot of birch trees. To distinguish between Krasnoyarsk and Kemerovo it is useful to know that the Kemerovo coverage is typically on open roads in fields with birch tree rows being commonplace. The coverage in Krasnoyarsk has a lot of urban areas and residential areas with some narrow, enclosed dirt roads on occasion. Obviously there are some counterexamples in both oblasts but in general these are the most common kind of locs in each. Also note that the Kemerovo coverage looks more similar to April than the other May coverage which is significantly greener.
For the white car coverage, if you think that you are in a big city then Moscow is probably the safest option as the other pieces of coverage don’t really have that much urban coverage. For the rest of the white car coverage it is more rural and in general gets cloudier the more west you go but this isn’t guaranteed. Also note that sometimes Syzran’s car will appear invisible.
As for distinguishing the invisible car May coverage:
- Novosibirsk has a similar appearance to Kemerovo and Krasnoyarsk but just flatter which can make it look quite similar to Omsk.
- Orenburg is quite desolate. It also has a lot of unpaved roads.
- Volgograd has short foliage and is quite green, it can also feel quite similar to Orenburg and even April Dagestan at times.
- Sterilitamak can have red soil as well as some random hills.
- Diuturli can be quite similar to Sterilitamak but flatter.
- Yekaterinburg has some urban and residential coverage as well as a lot of forests with a combination of birch and pine trees.
- Arkhangelsk has a northern feel with a lot of thin trees.
- That just leaves Moscow and Saint Petersburg which is seemingly an eternal 50/50 that can also be confused with Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk.
June and July
As I mentioned in the introduction to “The Months” category, I will be covering June and July together as they are virtually impossible to distinguish from each other. From now on in this section if I say “Summer” I am referring to both June and July as a collective, I am aware that August is also summer but it can occasionally appear like Autumn so I’m covering it separately. June and July are the first months where it appears to be fully summer. Trees will typically be fully grown and grass is long and green. There are obviously some exceptions to this (the obvious one being the desert) but it is also important to note that “Omsk trees” (birches that have very few leaves even in summer) are quite common in Omsk (I’m unsure of the exact reason for this but it could be something related to pesticides), so if you see these then still recognise that it can still be the middle of summer.
Omsk trees next to some regular summer trees in July
There is a lot of summer coverage in Russia, the general rule for summer coverage is; north of Moscow or east of Omsk.
The summer coverage has a decent amount of car meta.
It’s incredibly messy around Moscow but relatively organised outside of it. (note the obvious gaps are August or May coverage)
- I know I mentioned it in the introduction to this section but keep in mind that August coverage can look quite similar to summer so don’t take the above maps as being representative of all of summer.
- As can be seen, red car is typically Tyumen and east of it, for the most part in Tyumen, Omsk and Novosibirsk the car simply passed through towns without giving them proper coverage. (except a small part of Tobolsk because of this hotel in Tobolsk that the google driver stayed the night in during the trip from Surgut to Omsk 💀).
- In general the eastern half of Tomsk is Red Car, west isn’t. Same with Khanty-Mansi (Surgut’s Oblast).
- The main road in and out of Omsk is mainly red car, as well as a triangle in northwestern Omsk.
- I mapped Moscow and Saint Petersburg very lazily so it might not be the most accurate, I mapped a rough boundary for each car and used polygons to tag them.
- White car in Sakha Republic starts in Berkakit, there is some non-white car north of Berkakit but in general anything north of it should have white car.
- Summer coverage that isn’t east or north is usually downtown a big city (with the exception of the antenna road and also Tver, Novgorod and Voronezh. This typically means on gen 4 Russia if you don’t get a north or eastern vibe just click a city and pray
- I mentioned this earlier but even though the main antenna road usually has the antenna visible, you should still consider it if you are driving east.
- Omsk is very flat with a lot of birches, it also can have some very dark soil
- Krasnoyarsk and Kemerovo are similar to what they were described in the May section just with more grass and leaves.
- Pospelikha can look visually similar to Omsk but typically has more gravelly roads and redder soil, also nearly all of the main roads go either NW or NE. The spill to Kazanskoe in Tyumen and Novosibirsk can be distinguished from Omsk by no clouds and August coverage, respectively.
- All of the western cities with gen 4 coverage (Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny, Yekaterinburg and Tyumen) usually are on very thin roads or they are residential/urban areas.
- The Komi/Arkhangelsk 50/50 can be quite hard but the presence of Sosnowsky's hogweed in Komi can help distinguish the two. Komi also has better road quality. Ark has a lot more unpaved roads and usually a slightly redder tinge to the soil.
- It’s a pretty commonly known meta but Surgut is very sandy with a lot of birches.
August
August appears quite similarly to June and July at times. However it is sometimes possible to distinguish the two. This is because any coverage in late August appears somewhat like autumn/fall. When June and July should never appear like autumn/fall.
If you see leaves starting to turn yellow you should be in August, not June or July
It’s not always apparent but you can see it in a wide range of places
August coverage can be found in most of the same places as summer coverage
A zoom-in of western Russia shows that in August; Moscow and Voronezh are always black car and Tver is usually black car. Novgorod also has a tiny bit of black car spill, same with Vladimir.
A lot of the eastern August coverage is red car, red car in Buryatia is essentially only downtown Ulan-Ude.
For Magadan all you need to know is that south of the junction that goes to Seymchan or Magadan the car might or might not be white. North/west of the junction should always be white.
There’s some other important things to note about August:
- I know I’m repeating myself but please remember August can still look like June/July. It also can sometimes look like September.
- It’s also possible that some June/July locs have yellow leaves but I would say this is extremely rare from my experience as it is usually pesticide related.
- Murmansk can seemingly have black car on occasion but it seemed pretty random from some brief observations so I didn’t bother mapping it. It’s a pretty distinct region in Russia anyway (since it often looks like northern Norway) so car meta shouldn’t be that necessary after seeing it enough times. Another thing to note about Murmansk is that it looks like June/July quite often.
- Perm and Chelyabinsk can both have black car with antenna but most of the time it will be invisible car with antenna.
- August coverage can be used to distinguish Kazan from other cities with summer coverage (namely Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Tyumen) as Kazan only has August and September coverage in gen 4 (and it rarely looks like regular summer).
- Voronezh is by far the southernmost non-winter gen4 coverage so if you spend enough time it should become pretty recognisable based on vegetation without even considering the month or the black car.
September
Generation 4 September coverage is the rarest coverage in Russia (except for gen 2). It is located in 3 oblasts and only in limited areas within those oblasts. As you’ll soon see on the map it is located North of Kazan in Tatarstan (and maybe a tiny bit of spill into Mari-El). The rest of the coverage is downtown Ulan Ude and 3 roads in Murmansk. September looks quite similar to August but slightly more yellow/orange at times as it is further into the Autumn season.
An example location in Tatarstan
Murmansk has 3 main roads with September coverage in addition to some offroads. Kuzomen in the eastern Kola Peninsula has some very unique locations. Same with the road leading to it.
September coverage in Buryatia is always red car and downtown Ulan-Ude. It is also always west of the Selenge River (the main river flowing through the city)
All of the September coverage in Tatarstan is invisible car and located west or north of Kazan. There is a lot of small roads through mild hills, with some narrow roads in forests and some suburban/urban.
Even though there is very little September coverage there is still some important things to note
- September and August can appear quite similarly, however September should never appear like June or July
- Like in August, Murmansk might have black car in places but I’ve been unable to map it consistently.
- It is quite easy to get some insane guesses if you are able to determine the month accurately as all of the September coverage is pretty different to each other. Murmansk has a northern vibe, Kazan is generic/central and Ulan Ude is red car and surrounded by mountains.
Miscellaneous
Before we move onto gen 3 I’m just gonna briefly cover some additional stuff that can be used to region guess gen 4 Russia.
Snow
Snow coverage in generation 4 can actually significantly help with region guessing. For this section of the guide I’ve broken down snow into 5 different levels, I’ll provide some example locations for each and then a rough map of each.
- “Extreme Snow” Saratov, Rostov, Volgograd, Krasnodar, Kabardino-Balkarian Republic
- “Lots of Snow” Saratov, Voronezh. Volgograd, Stavropol, Astrakhan
- “Some Snow” Saratov, Voronezh, Volgograd, Stavropol
- “Little Snow” Saratov, Voronezh, Volgograd, Stavropol, Oryol
- “Basically no snow” Saratov, Voronezh, Astrakhan, Rostov, Oryol
Before I show a map of each level of snow; if you just want to know where snow can be found with no regard for how much snow there is then this map should do the trick.
So in general if you see snow in generation 4, Saratov, Voronezh, Volgograd and Rostov are the safest sends and it is never north of Liipetsk/Oryol.
Saratov and Voronezh remain the kings of snow when only taking areas with extreme snow into account. Veshenskaya in northern Rostov is also a decent place to send.
Saratov and Voronezh remain on top when only taking locations with “A Lot of Snow”. Eastern Voronezh is probably the best send, but landscape will help more.
You’re probably noticing the general trend of “you should probably send Saratov, Voronezh or Volgograd” with snow and it still applies here with “Some Snow”.
I feel like a broken record bringing up Saratov, Voronezh and Volgograd but something to note that this is the first time Oryol appears.
When looking at “Basically No Snow” Saratov, Voronezh and Volgograd are less dominant but are still pretty prominent in this map.
Finally some notes about generation 4 snow coverage:
- If there is “some snow” or higher and it’s red car then send Rostov, red car snow can also be found in Lipetsk, Stary Oskol and Voronezh.
- Black car snow can be found in Shakty, Stavropol, Pyatigorsk and slightly east of Nalchik
- Black car antenna with snow is only found in Shakty.
- No car with antenna and snow is only found in Rostov and Shakty (and nearby areas)
- It is somewhat useful to know that while Saratov and Voronezh have the most snow coverage overall, this is mainly in rural areas. As far as I’m aware the cities of Saratov and Voronezh have 0 snow and I would recommend sending Rostov-on-Don, Astrakhan, Krasnodar, Stavropol, Pyatigorsk if there is snow and it feels like a massive city.
Also keep in mind that I might not have mapped every single location with snow as I mainly recorded locations that I got while playing A Balanced Russia but hopefully I will have covered each area that has snow but maybe not all of the snow in that area. If you find any snow that I haven’t mapped, feel free to DM me the location on Discord and I will update the map if it’s significant new information that I think is worth adding.
Gen 4 Conclusion
As a quick recap for generation 4:
- Winter coverage south, summer coverage near major cities, north or east of urals.
- Antenna is never east of Chelyabinsk, same with black car
- Summer red car is always east/north of Tyumen.
- Random gen 4 narrow forested road is usually near to a major city.
- Sakha, Magadan, Omsk, Tomsk, Yamalo-Nenets, Komi, Arkhangelsk, Murmansk are usually generation 4.
- If there is significant green grass in the Caucasus you should be east of Karachay-Cherkessia. Dagestan is the greenest southern gen 4.
- Karachay-Cherkessia and Chechnya don’t have generation 4
- In the Caucasus, generation 4 without grass should be west of Chechnya. (with the exception of the desert in northern Dagestan)
- Voronezh and Saratov are the best places to send with snow.
- The northernmost snow is located in Oryol/Lipetsk
- Black gen 4 car with antenna when not in summer is Belarus border or Rostov.
- Black gen 4 car no antenna when not in summer is Kazan, Voronezh, Rostov, Stavropol, Kabardino-Balkarian, North Ossetia-Alania.
- Every oblast with gen 4 winter coverage with invisible car and antenna borders Ukraine
- April white car is downtown Penza or Tambov.
- May white car is from Lipetsk-Penza + western Samara.
- May red car is Kemerovo or Krasnoyarsk.
- This is more miscellaneous information but as a general rule: birch trees that aren’t artificially planted (or in mountains) will always be north of Volgograd which can help rule out some of the southern oblasts, especially in winter coverage which can make it harder to figure out the climate.
- Moss is most commonly found in Arkhangelsk but you can see some in Komi, Murmansk and Yamalo / Khanty Mansi. As well as one road in Tver
I’ll probably add to this list over time but this is intended to be used kind of like a last minute study sheet that you read outside of the exam hall, but instead you can use right before an ABR session or smth 💀
Here are some practice maps for generation 4 coverage:
One for February-April: https://www.geoguessr.com/maps/6479f8eb1a1c194a58712be8
One for May-September: https://www.geoguessr.com/maps/646f3075a647d0b42d89d0c4
Generation 3
- Generation 3 coverage in Russia started in June 2012 when the cities of Oryol and Bryansk received coverage. In July most cities in Russia, going as far east as Kemerovo received coverage. Throughout the rest of the year most cities between Murmansk and Krasnoyarsk received coverage, not much rural coverage was added except the E105 from Moscow to Saint-Petersburg and the entirety of Kaliningrad. In 2013 basically everywhere in Russia received coverage.
- 2014 saw a similar release in terms of range to 2012 but without the northernmost coverage.
- 2015 was the smallest year in terms of added coverage where nothing was added east of Chelyabinsk with the exceptions of some cool trekkers in Kamchatka and Altai Republic. Up until this point all of the car coverage was long antenna.
- Short antennas were introduced in 2016 and 2017 when most cities received coverage, with some short antenna and some long antenna. I will go into more detail about the impact of this later.
- 2018 saw most of Russia receiving short antenna coverage stopping at the Irkutsk-Krasnoyarsk border.
- 2019 saw western Russia, stopping before Tyumen, receive mainly short antenna and some long antenna coverage with the final pieces of generation 3 Russia coverage dropping in the Caucasus during September 2019.
On the next pages are some very messy maps of the not covered-over generation 3 coverage as a very rough overview of this section. This summary will be expanded on in the later sections
The Years
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
Summary
As you can see from the previous maps, generation 3 Russia is extremely complicated compared to generation 4. Each year can be somewhat accurately put into 3 categories.
- Universal coverage but often times only being main roads and major cities (2013, 2018)
- Sporadic coverage in areas that weren’t covered in the previous 2 years (2014 and 2015 filled in gaps that 2013 left, 2019 did similarly for 2018)
- Cities and roads that are essentially downtown to major cities receiving coverage (2012, 2016, 2017)
If you want to see a visualisation of how the coverage evolved you can check it out on Emily’s website (https://geo.emily.bz/coverage-dates/russia which also has some other cool geography-related stuff such as phone code and sub-division quizzes while also being useful for studying coverage, which I used a lot when making this doc). And just before I start mentioning the cars on the next page is all of the maps piled on top of eachother your viewing pleasure, enjoy.
Now that your eyes have been burned, I am going to introduce you to the plethora of google cars that drove across russia from 2012-2019.
The Cars
There are 13 different google cars (17 if you count the variants of no.2 and no.9 separately) that I am going to talk about in Russia. The differences in some of them are questionable (namely white vs silver car but I will get to this during their sections).
- Black car with a straight long antenna (2012-2015)
- Black car with a tilted long antenna (left or right) (2012-2015)
- Black car with a blurred straight long antenna (2012-2014)
- White car with a straight long antenna (2012-2016)
- White car with a tilted long antenna (right) (2012-2016)
- Silver car with a straight long antenna (2015,2019)
- Dark blue with a straight short antenna (2016-2017)
- Dark blue with tilted short antenna (2016-2017)
- Invisible car with a straight short antenna (4 variants) (2018,2019)
- Invisible car with a blurred short antenna (2018,2019)
- Invisible car with a tilted and slightly blurred antenna (2018)
- Invisible car with a tilted short antenna (2019)
- Black car with a short antenna (2018) (likely the same as 2016/2017)
To most of you reading this, this number might feel shockingly high since on a surface level it appears as if Russia has 4 different gen 3 cars but I assure you that by the end of this section you will understand the differences that distinguish them from each other.
Note that long antennas also have variants to them but most of the time they are hard to distinguish from each other and are less regionally confined than short antenna variants, but I will include a screenshot of the map at the end.
Keep in mind that for now I won’t really be showing zoomed in sections of the map and will be leaving that for ‘The Months’ where I will go into more detail. But before I show you these cars, I’d like to give a special thank you to Illusion and VehicleRonald for their work in mapping and discovering these cars as well as Russiacord as a whole for adding to the overall knowledge of Russia in geoguessr.
Black Car With a Long Antenna (2012-2015)
The classic Russian google car, the car that can be found in the widest variety of places. There are 3 variants of this that I’m going to go into detail for; straight, tilted and blurred. Straight and tilted can be hard to distinguish at times (especially on unpaved roads or while on a curve). Below is a map that shows every place that a black car can be found
As you can see from the map above, black car can be found essentially everywhere in Russia with some obvious gaps in places that are nearly exclusively generation 4, the eastern half of the Caucasus (which is gen 4 or short antenna) southern Chelyabinsk, Altai Krai and Novosibirsk, and most of the max eastern parts of Russia.
There are some things to note about this:
- All of the black car east of Chita (not including south east of Chita and Yakutsk/Magadan) is blurred antenna, this can be pretty useful if you are considering east.
- All of the 2013 coverage near Surgut is blurred antenna and then all of the 2012 (that is almost exclusively downtown) is tilted right.
Now that you roughly know where the cars can be found; it is time to show you what the actual differences in the cars are.
Normal Blurred Tilted Left Tilted Right
I measure if something is tilted based off of its angle to the brakelight / the back of the car blur. It is important to note that while the car is turning or driving on an unpaved/bumpy road it can make the straight antenna appear tilted or make tilted appear non-tilted. It’s also important to note that the tilted right antenna can have a wide range of tilt. I’ll talk about that more in that specific section but for now here’s an example location of something I have marked as “Tilted Right” but doesn’t appear as tilted as the Tver loc above. While this location might not even appear tilted, as the antenna appears to be vertical, it is important to note that the brake light of the car is slightly tilted left due to the road quality and thus if the antenna were straight then it would appear to be slightly tilted left (picture showing this in the bottom right). Because of this it is quite likely that I have mis-labelled some of the tilts on the antenna so take my map of tilted antenna with a grain of salt. In the specific section for tilted antenna I will highlight areas where the antenna is extremely tilted and this should hopefully be reliable to use. And finally before I move onto the exact distribution of the cars, it is important that black car can appear invisible at times, this seems to be most common in Sverdlovsk, Tula and Altai Krai. It can also look white in certain angles of sunlight / road textures, the same can be said for white car appearing black.
Black Car With A Straight Unblurred Long Antenna (2012-2015)
Obviously not the most important google car to learn the distribution of but knowing where it isn’t is still pretty useful.
Black Car With A Blurred Straight Long Antenna (2012-2014)
Extremely useful antenna, if you know the approximate region this can really help to narrow down the road. Also helps identify Surgut as the majority of the northern blurred antenna is in that oblast. All of the Sakhalin coverage is blurred antenna and all of the Khanty-Mansi (Surgut Oblast) coverage except for the 2012 downtown stuff is blurred.
Black Car With A Tilted Long Antenna (2012-2015)
This variant of google car can be pretty hard to identify at times, especially while on bad road quality and curves. The antenna can be both tilted left and tilted right with tilted right being by far the most common. I didn’t really map a lot of the old urban coverage that is 99% covered over but there is a chance that I have missed some of the 2012 tilted coverage as from my findings a lot of the 2012 is tilted.
- As you can see, tilted antenna appears pretty sporadically a lot of the time appearing in a bunch of random cities across the entirety of Russia, mostly due to the 2012 coverage, however you can also see a lot of oblasts have roads with tilted antenna.
- The roads are mainly found in oblasts next to the European border but also Moscow, Oryol, Lipetsk, Kirov and Bashkortostan. As you can see from the maps the tilt of the antenna can be used to region guess certain oblasts (i.e. south west Bryansk and south west Tula are the only places in their oblasts to have tilted right) as well as to help in some 50/50s.
- Most of the tilted left is located in Belgorod but not really in other fall coverage oblasts., with some tilted left maybe being in Bryansk (seems inconsistent). Tilted left in Yaroslavl-Ivanovo-Vladimir is located in a bigger region than I have mapped but I mapped it minimally due to how low the degree of tilt is as it’s debatable as to whether or not it's tilted left or straight. The same applies to south western Leningrad which I haven’t mapped at all
- As one last thing before I move on from tilted antenna, it is also useful to know that the degree of tilt can vary. I didn’t whip out a protractor and measure the exact angle but from my experience if the antenna is extremely tilted you are most likely to be in Tver or Novgorod (only in summer coverage), this is in no way guaranteed as some cities (such as Rubtsovsk in Altai Krai) can have this extreme tilt, same can be said about random 2012 coverage in western oblasts but I haven’t really mapped this as its pretty subjective. Below is an example of extreme tilt vs regular tilt.
Extreme tilt in Tver Mild tilt in Oryol
Conclusion for black car with a long antenna
Overall this car is one of the least useful cars in Russia as it is found pretty much everywhere. However as you have seen in the maps there is some important things to note, Surgut being only blurred or tilted right is extremely useful as well as the blurred antennas to region guess Bryansk and Tula and to straight up know the road on some rounds if you can determine an approximate region. It also allows you to completely rule out the easternmost quarter of the country that is black car as all of its blurred (everything east of Chita including Sakhalin) with the exception of Magadan which has a very distinct look so it is learnable anyways.
White Car With A Long Antenna (2012-2016)
A pretty well known google car throughout Russia, most people simply say “Chelyabinsk or East” which is a pretty decent rule of thumb but there's a little bit more to that which I will get into. This car can also be easily confused with the silver car but I will cover that more in the silver car section. The tilt of white car is even less trustworthy than the black car tilt as most of the time it is way more subtle. To be honest you should probably ignore most of the tilted vs non-tilted antenna for white car as the angle is usually too small to notice. I will point out the ones with a more significant angle. On the map if there is a black dot on top of a white dot then it is basically implying that the tilt can vary depending on road texture.
Like I mentioned in the black car section, the colour of the car can’t always be trusted as various things can make the car appear the opposite colour. Also note that some of the Altai Krai and Novosibirsk roads the white car appears invisible more frequently than the rest of the white car.
The most important to note things about white car as follows:
- Fall white car coverage is mainly Tula, southern Chelyabinsk and Altai Krai. As well as some in the north west of the country located in Vologda and north of it.
- May white car coverage can be found in Amur and Jewish Autonomous Oblast
- Summer white car coverage can be found in the rest of the white car coverage
- Keep in mind that there is a decent chance that I’ve missed some urban white car coverage in big cities but considering that most of it is covered over I didn’t bother looking for it in places like Saint Petersburg and Moscow
White Car With A Straight Long Antenna
Don’t know why I’ve included this as a subsection but just another reminded that straight vs tilted is not a consistent meta for white car 💀but here are some picture of white car as well as a black car image at the end as a comparison
Black car for comparison
Map of white car with a straight long antenna
As you can see from the above maps there is a few big clusters of white car to take note of:
- Most of the eastern coverage starting in central Amur is white car as well as Kamchatka and two towns in Sakha.
- Southern Chelyabinsk has a lot of white car which is usually fall coverage. Same applies to Novosibirsk and Altai krai where snow can be found on some roads.
- White car can be found somewhat sporadically in western Russia but Tula has a lot of white car fall coverage and Oryol has a lot of white car summer coverage
White Car With A Tilted Long Antenna (2012-2016)
Also not sure why I’ve included this subsection but note that all of the tilted white car is tilted right. Tilted seems most consistent in the south and northwest but I wouldn’t say it's completely trustworthy. It also seems to have the highest degree of tilt in the northwest with the tilt in the south being almost negligible but still present. .
Silver Car With A Straight Long Antenna (2015,2019)
Okay now is where the car meta starts to resemble something along the lines of schizophrenia. There seems to be a very very slight difference in the 2019 long car (and some of the 2015) compared to the white cars in other years. Usually this difference can be noticed by looking at the blur on the brake light on the car which is more prominent in silver car than white car. I would suggest not trying to differentiate the cars based on their colour as this is way too dependent on road colour and lighting but instead just use the size of the blur on the brake light. Maybe the car should even be referred to as “the big brake light white car”
Keep in mind that this larger blur on the brake light can still occur on white car and likewise with small blur on the brake light on silver car so take this map car with a grain of salt. However you should never be able to see the back of the car unblurred on silver car (while you can with white car) The dots in Voronezh and east of Kazan are white car that have a higher tendency to appear like silver car, and vice versa.
Notes on silver car:
- Another reminder to not fully trust silver vs white car, they can be quite subjective at times.
- As the map above shows it’s pretty common in Volgograd, Tula and Adygea (somewhat helps in the Adygea-Krasnodar 50/50).
- A lot of the silver car has a slight tilt on the antenna but this isn’t very consistent and can’t really be used to determine which of the silver car areas you are in.
- The further south you go the later in the year the coverage was taken, with Tula being in June and Adygea/Krasnodar having August and September
- It’s also all 2019 coverage with the exception of the questionably silver car in Voronezh and Kirov/Tatarstan border which is 2015.
Dark Blue Car With A Short Antenna
I don’t really have much to say about this car before getting into its variants but something to keep in mind is that since the car covered Russia in 2016 and 2017 it is way more likely to find it uncovered-over in areas that didn’t receive 2018, 2019 or 2021 coverage which makes it more common in Eastern Russia (regular short antenna never went more east than western Irkutsk Oblast) and less likely to find in cities that received a lot of generation 4 coverage like Moscow and Saint Petersburg. From my experience of playing a bunch of a balanced Russia (can’t really say much about the distribution people go for in handpicked maps) is that it is most common in: Khabarovsk, Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Amur, Primorsky, Zabaykalsky, Irkutsk, Khakassia, Altai Krai (in relative order of frequency).
Dark Blue Car With A Straight Short Antenna (2016-2017)
This car looks like regular short antenna car but a bit of the back of the car below the antenna showing. This car which I frequently refer to as “downtown car” is basically found in every single major city in Russia but pretty much exclusively downtown, from my experience the coverage becomes most rural in Rostov and Jewish Autonomous Oblast but it is still pretty close to major population centres at all times. I am way too lazy to have mapped this but luckily VehicleRonald is the goat and provided this map of them which also includes which antenna type (the descriptions of these antenna types can be found in the section about the invisible car with a short antenna which can be found here)
Most of the 2016 and 2017 coverage is the car pictured above except for Arkhangelsk and Murmansk which is tilted or straight long antenna white car. Here are some example locs of this car Novosibirsk, Blagoveshchensk, Syktyvkar, Pskov. One final note on this car is that sometimes the colour can be hard to see or just straight up invisible which can be quite annoying on eastern locs which have no other short antenna. A lot of the C antenna is covered on that map by other antennas in the same city so to the left is a map of just C antenna (but in red to stand out more than the green)
And here is a map of this car with a blurred antenna.
Dark Blue Car With A Tilted Short Antenna (2016-2017)
Gonna be a quick section as I don’t really have much to say about this car. I probably haven’t seen the full extent of this car but it is definitely in Pskov, Petrozavodsk, Novgorod, Vladikavkaz. Krasnodar, Leningrad and Moscow. The same notes about the straight antenna variant of this car apply to tilted too; where the colour can sometimes be harder to see or invisible.
Invisible Car With A Short Antenna (2018,2019)
Okay now we’re probably onto the car that I will cover in the most depth as the amount of variants to this car which seems pretty basic at first glance is quite absurd. Not including the 2016 and 2017 short antenna there are 7 different google cars in Russia with a short antenna. As I’ve mentioned previously in this doc, short antenna coveraged stopped on the Irkutsk/Krasnoyarsk border and only went as far north as Segezha in central Karelia, other northern short antenna can be found in Surgut and Veliky Ustyug (north eastern Vologda).
For the most part the different variants of cars don’t really cross over each other in the same year of coverage (2018 and 2019 in the same area can have different antennas). Moscow is the most blatant example of the cars crossing over but it is also somewhat apparent in Leningrad and Rostov. Apart from these though the antennas do a decent job at following oblast borders pretty tightly which is nice for memorisation.
An example of the Ulyanovsk, Mordovia border is pictured on the right where the car is shown finding the first road that they are able to turn around on once changing oblast.
Another thing to note about coverage patterns is that 2018 coverage is typically major roads and 2019 coverage is usually roads that are near to towns. The zoom-in below of Pskov shows this quite nicely with pink being 2018 and white being 2019. This information can be somewhat useful as if you think its 2019 coverage then you’re more likely to get a lucky 4900 score by clicking on a city than just clicking somewhere on a road (even if it looks like you’re just on a road not near a city). As mentioned before if you feel like you’re near a town you can combine this knowledge with the fact 2018 and 2019 can have different antennas in the same area to further help you regionguess Russia
Invisible Car With A Straight, Unblurred Short Antenna (4 variants) (2018,2019)
I’ve mentioned him before but before I get into this section, special shoutout to VehicleRonald for this section of the guide as he was the person who first discovered and mapped these variants as well as Illusion who mapped it further (and me who mapped it even further 💀)
There are 4 different antennas which for the rest of this guide I will refer to as “A type”, “B type”, “C type” and “very B type”. The discrepancy in these types is the location of the top ‘ridge’ on the antenna and in the case of ‘very B’ it’s the shape of the ridge that distinguishes it from the regular b type antenna.
A Type B Type Very B Type C Type
As you can see from the images above the 4 antennas are characterised by the following:
- A Type has the uppermost ridge located on the right side of the antenna
- B Type has the uppermost ridge located on the left side of the antenna
- Very B Type differs from regular b type by the shape of the uppermost ridge which is more rectangular in the very b version
- C Type doesn’t have the uppermost ridge anywhere near as high up on the antenna as the other types
These types apply to the 2016 and 2017 cars as well, I talked about this in that section but as a recap for the most part A is located east or south, C is west of Omsk and B/Very B is everywhere west of Irkutsk. Very B is found in the most locations but A type is the most common due to eastern 2016/2017 being more common than western
A Type Antenna
B Type Antenna
Very B Type Antenna
C Type Antenna
Notes About Invisible Car With A Straight, Unblurred Short Antenna
As you can see from the maps above, these antennas actually significantly help with region guessing. As a summary of the maps:
- B Antenna has the widest range but luckily B antenna always has smudges on the camera that can help region guess, I won’t be covering smudges in this doc (I haven’t even properly learned them 💀) but I highly recommended Illusion’s upcoming smudge doc as they can significantly help with region guessing.
- C Antenna is pretty localised into a column in western Russia between the Baltics and Kirov, stretching all the way down into Rostov.
- Very B Type Antenna (which doesn’t have smudges) can be found near random cities along the European border + more east and south, it’s pretty useful for distinguishing Kurgan from bordering oblasts although regular B type can rarely be found in Kurgan.
- A Type Antenna is probably the most useful of the 4 variants as its located in places that usually look pretty distinct from each other so it’s pretty useful for determining the region.
- Something to note is that straight short blurred antenna will always be B type and both tilted short variants are always A type. This means that if you think an antenna is tilted but the top node is on the left or further down (meaning it looks like tilted B type or tilted C type) then this tilt is due to something like the car turning or poor road quality and you should still send as if the antenna is straight B or straight C.
- The hole in all of the maps in a triangle from Ulyanovsk-Ufa-Perm is all blurred short. The holes in Leningrad and Volgograd are tilted, the central and eastern Caucasus are also blurred or tilted
- Another reminder that the downtown car can potentially mess with the distribution but always be slightly careful on urban rounds and maybe try to use other clues (hahaha im just kidding urban Russia can burn in hell, there are no other clues 💀)
And here are some example locations for each antenna since I didn’t provide enough in the above section:
A Type: Orenburg, Samara, Smolensk, Oryol, Krasnodar
B Type: Kemerovo, Altai Krai, Sverdlovsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Ivanovo, Kalmykia, Kursk
Very B Type: Krasnoyarsk, Khakassia, Kurgan, Tver, Kursk, Krasnodar
C Type: Vologda, Pskov, Ryazan, Kirov, Saratov, Rostov
As well as some practice maps (by Illusion 🐐) for each of the antenna types.
A Type, B Type, Very B Type, C Type and one for short antenna as a whole. Other maps for blurred and tilted will be provided in their respective sections)
Invisible Car With A Blurred Short Antenna (2018,2019)
This antenna is pretty unique and pretty identifiable, it appears quite blurry compared to the regular short antenna. This might not be that important to note but apparently (I haven’t really tested this much) but on max zoom the image quality of blurred antenna is more pixelated than unblurred. So for the rare case when you can't see the antenna this can be pretty useful.
Blurred Unblurred for comparison
- As you can see from the above map, for the most part this antenna is in the area from Saratov-Perm.
- For a lot of this area (with the exception of Chelyabinsk, Samara, Kirov and western Kazan) they exclusively use blurred antenna which makes this an extremely useful antenna to know as if the antenna isn’t blurred you can straight up rule out Bashkortostan (except for some tilted blurred downtown), Perm, Izhevsk, Ulyanovsk and all of the eastern half of Tatarstan which is extremely useful for regionguessing.
- It also helps a lot in the south as from the below map you can eliminate a lot of the southern regions if it’s not blurred.
- Blurred antenna also always has a smudge to the front of the car (sometimes hard to see) which can help identify it NMPZ.
- While not on the map; blurred antenna drove the road from Kostroma to Perm (through Kirov) but that road has been covered over by gen 4 for the most part but broken coverage on that road has ruined some oblast streaks for me.
Here are some additional example locs for blurred antenna:
Chechnya, Stavropol, Ivanovo, Perm, Tatarstan, Ulyanovsk, Mari El
And here is a practice map for blurred short antenna.
Invisible Car With A Tilted Short Antenna (2018,2019)
Tilted antenna looks pretty similar to regular A type antenna. However there is a discernible tilted on the antenna (always tilted slightly to the left)
Here are some locations of tilted so you can see what it looks like
And some A type straight antennas
As you can see above there are two different types of tilted antenna, unblurred is significantly more common than blurred so being able to identify the difference is useful. In the images above the left one is blurred and the middle one is unblurred. The 2018 tilted coverage is always blurred and the 2019 coverage is always unblurred.
There are a few things to note about the above map:
- For the most part the tilted short antenna follows a diagonal line between Karelia and Volgograd with some random tilted elsewhere in the south (mainly Stavropol) and some in downtown Ufa.
- Blurred is mainly Volgograd and Leningrad/Karelia. With some downtown Ufa and Krasnodar
- 99% of the tilted antenna north west of Moscow is May coverage with the exception of Leningrad.
- As we saw previously; short antenna Leningrad is usually tilted with very little straight short antenna (which is A type)
And like I’ve provided for the rest of the short antennas, here is a practice map for tilted
Black Car With A Short Antenna (2018)
I’m back at it again with another schizophrenic meta, this time we have a car that is pretty visually similar to the 2016 and 2017 car but in 2018 instead. Basically if you think it’s the downtown car but you feel like you are far away from a big city then it is likely this car.
This car isn’t the most consistent of metas and the colour can disappear seemingly at random, although it is most consistent in Tver, Pskov and Tambov. Below is a map of all the places I’ve seen it but it’s definitely more widely spread than I have recorded, I will likely update this map at some stage in the future.
I wouldn’t trust this map with my life but it’s still a pretty decent meta imo, especially for Tambov as opposed to neighbouring oblasts but I definitely haven’t mapped every single instance of this car.
Long Antenna Types
Like with short antenna there are 4 different types of long antenna that can be distinguished by the location of the top node on the antenna.
As you can see, these antenna types are way harder to distinguish from each other. A and B are the most important ones as they are more distinguishable. On the following 2 pages are the maps for each type. Keep in mind that for the first time in this guide. Some of these locations will be covered over by gen 4 but it’s just to give you an idea.
I don’t really have that much to say about these long antenna types as they’re not that useful imo but I figured I may as well include them. The most helpful is B antenna especially in Krasnoyarsk and surrounding Oblasts.
Conclusion For Generation 3 Car Meta
Obviously due to the amount of data in this section it’s hard to summarise it but if you want a quick thing to focus on I would mainly look at the short antenna stuff, not including the downtown car, as this is the most useful imo. However I will try to remind you now about some of the stuff that I consider the most important.
- Short antenna 2018/2019 stops at the Irkutsk/Krasnoyarsk border. It is also usually not found very far north.
- White car is most common max east, (Amur-Primorsky), Novosibirsk and Altai Krai have a lot of white car fall coverage, this can also be found in southern Chelyabinsk and Tula. White car summer coverage is most common in Oryol, Kursk, Voronezh and Bashkortostan but can be found randomly elsewhere. The south also has white car with a slightly tilted antenna in a variety of months.
- Tilted short antenna is found in a rough line from Karelia to Stavropol. In Volgograd and Leningrad/Karelia it is slightly blurred
- Blurred antenna can be found in the majority of the south as well as an area encompassed by Saratov, Kirov, Perm and Chelyabinsk.
- Generation 3 snow coverage is essentially exclusive to Novosibirsk but there is a tiny bit elsewhere (such as on mountains).
The Months
Generation 3 has the same number of months as generation 4 but both starting and finishing two months later. April and November are extremely rare with a decent amount of May and October coverage with the majority being June through September. The same notes about months from the generation 4 section still apply to generation 3 so I would recommend refreshing yourself on that section if you deem necessary. But basically adjacent months can look similar to each other so don’t trust them fully and May coverage in the south can look different to May coverage in the north.
Long antenna spans from April to November. Short antenna is from May to October. The downtown car is from June to November. However for this entire section I will be ignoring the existence of the downtown car as its coverage is much more unpredictable and thus less useful. For each month I will give an overview of what it looks like with some notes and examples and then covering where short antenna is for that month followed by where long antenna is. Also something to keep in mind that my mapping of the Moscow area is very rough so don’t trust it completely but as a general rule, assume everything can be found in Moscow.
April
Generation 3 April coverage is pretty rare in Russia, most of it has been covered over by newer coverage. Basically all that is left of it is gas stations along the M-4 and some towns around Moscow and neighbouring oblasts (with a tiny bit in Krasnodar). April coverage looks pretty similar to May coverage but there’s less grass and less leaves on the trees. You can also find some snow on the ground in Tver and Novgorod.
I don’t have that much to say about April other than that it is always black car 2013 and might be randomly tilted. It is extremely rare coverage as most of it is covered over, it can look similar to some early May coverage which is most commonly found in Vladimir. If you think it’s april coverage it’s probably best to send Moscow as a safe hedge.
May
Overview
Similarly to generation 4, in generation 3 May coverage is still the most useful month to know in Russia. Similarly to generation 4 (I’m saying this as if how months work somehow changed in the 2 years between generation 3 and generation 4 💀) May coverage usually has slightly more yellow leaves with slightly less grass than summer. Unlike gen 4 we are lucky enough to be able to have the same location with gen 3 may coverage and gen 3 summer coverage which I will show below (although they are taking from different sides of the road). Link (you might have to change the coverage date off of gen 4)
Short Antenna
Short antenna May coverage is extremely useful in Russia. Using the different types of antenna you should be easily able to narrow it down to very specific regions of the country.
Map
A zoom-in on the Moscow area (likely mapped inaccurately)
Long Antenna
Most of the long antenna is straight unblurred black car with tilt seemingly being somewhat random. So on this map keep in mind the tilt isn’t that trustworthy.
Notes
- As you probably saw on the above maps, the purple in the long antenna section refers to June coverage that looks similar to May coverage, this is quite subjective so I may have missed some of it but the best examples are in Kemerovo and Krasnoyarsk. They are the same car and antenna as the coverage mapped closest to them.
- The eastern May coverage is quite useful for region guessing the east as you know you are most likely to be in Amur or the western half of the Jewish Autonomous oblast (which has a distinct road with rainy/overcast coverage). Due to being further north the Khabarovsk stuff can sometimes appear like May as the trees are thinner. The same applies for Yakutsk and Kamchatka.
- Snow can be found in Sakhalin and Sovetskaya Gavan as well as the distinct coverage in Vorkuta.
- As I’ve mentioned previously, the tilt on the antenna in the west is probably not the most trustworthy so take it with a grain of salt.
- The short antenna stuff is really important to know as it’s usually a pretty nice region guess for free simply with the antenna type and the month.
- There is a lot more May coverage that has been covered over which can be usually found uncovered over at random gas stations which I haven’t mapped completely. If you want to check out where all potential May coverage can be found I once again recommend Emily's Website as this guide only focuses on the uncovered over stuff.
- “Super-may” coverage which looks like early May or April is most common in Vladimir but this is kind of fake.
And here are some example locations for May coverage
Yaroslavl, Leningrad, Perm, Kemerovo, Krasnoyarsk, Amur, Khabarovsk, Sakhalin, Vladimir
June, July and August
Overview
Unlike the generation 4 section I have grouped these 3 months together, mainly because August can look quite similar to July and there’s also more August coverage so it is less useful to know it. However I will be including a map of where it can be found but won’t go through it separately. As mentioned in generation 4, June - July are the greenest months in Russia while August has leaves that have begun to turn slightly yellow as Autumn approaches. This isn’t necessarily always distinguishable but it’s something to keep in mind.
As I mentioned in the gen 4 section, phenomena such as ‘Omsk trees’ can still occur which might mess up your perception of the month as well as some of the June coverage looking suspiciously like May coverage (in a way that you might suspect that the google driver’s calendar was dysfunctional 💀). These will still be covered as June but refer to the May section to see which areas might have June coverage that appear quite similarly to May.
Short Antenna
Both ‘B’ and ‘Very B’ can be found in downtown Yekaterinburg which doesn’t come through on the map, same with Kurgan and Moscow
Long Antenna
Notes
- As you can see from the maps there is surprisingly little long antenna coverage on roads in western Russia. However, keep in mind that these maps won’t show some of the 2012 and 2013 coverage that wasn’t covered over in most towns, so while it is somewhat rare it still exists.
- There are a western few oblasts that received complete long antenna summer coverage which are shown on the map; Krasnodar, Chelyabinsk, Leningrad, Ivanovo in particular received the most but Ivanovo and Leningrad also received a lot of short antenna compared to the others.
- Many oblasts received a similar amount of short antenna coverage so you can’t really use the same strategy of “if its a dirt road with long antenna summer coverage then it’s likely Leningrad, Chelyabinsk, etc etc”.
- Not really that much more to say about this other than I would prioritise learning the short antenna maps as these are way more consistently high yield than long antenna.
- Ivanovo and Leningrad sometimes appear tilted left but it’s not that consistent
- I am likely missing a lot of downtown 2012 and 2013 long antenna which can be blurred and tilted at random. I should have it properly mapped in places where it can be commonly found uncovered over but in places where it’s usually covered over by short antenna or gen 4 I will likely not have marked on the map.
September and October
Overview
Similarly to what I said in the gen 4 section, September has leaves that have begun to turn yellow or even red.
Here are some example locations in generation 3. Bryansk, Lipetsk, Altai Krai, Khanty-Mansi. Some September can appear more like August; for example this Novgorod location. Some northern coverage can look completely dead due to colder climate, like here in Murmansk. October can be visually quite similar to September but usually there are less leaves on the trees and there is even snow in some locations such as Kaliningrad, and the more famous examples in Novosibirsk. 1, 2, 3, 4. Here are some more example locations of October which might not always be discernible from September but it’s not that helpful to do so anyway. 1, 2, 3.
Short Antenna
There’s not that much short antenna September coverage and even less for October meaning if you can determine the month it can help you make a decent region guess
Long Antenna
Notes
- There is a somewhat fake meta (albeit a decently good one) that a black car with a bigger brake light than usual should mean that it is Kaliiningrad, it’s pretty good meta but it’s not 100% trustworthy. There’s also a chance Kaliningrad might have tilted or even blurred antennas but I haven’t paid much attention to it due to it being pretty recognisable without car metas as you can usually see a “Kaliningrad tree” (oak trees) which often have white-painted rings on them.
- Bryansk has one tilted left location marked on the map but I’m not really sure if it’s tilted due to the road/wind or something else rather than the car actually being naturally tilted but I’ve left it marked as a warning.
- As you can see the cars can help region guess or even identify oblasts (tilted left essentially being guaranteed to be Belgorod) but be careful with how much you trust the tilt on the antenna as it isn’t the most consistent meta.
- In general gen 3 fall coverage becomes less common the further east you go and becomes more common in short antenna the further south you go.
- White car fall coverage is mainly concentrated in Tula, southern Chelyabinsk or around Novosibirsk and Altai Krai
- Blurred antenna fall coverage can be extremely useful to determine the region or even narrow down the road.
November
I don’t have that much to say about November since it appears quite similar to October and is only found in central Kaliningrad which can help you region guess it slightly (centre hedging normally is basically the same as clicking the middle of the November coverage). November can have even less leaves than October but it’s not really that consistently differentiable.
Here are some examples of the November coverage in Kaliningrad: 1, 2, 3. Keep in mind that the downtown car can also have November coverage in southern Russia so don’t insta send Kaliningrad if you think it’s November. The fall coverage in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk can also look equally dead to Kaliningrad but they should be distinguishable with landscape, the same applies to the desert fall coverage but again they should be distinguishable after seeing them both enough times.
Gen 3 Conclusion
Similarily to generation 4, here is a quick recap of the most important notes about generation 3 coverage in Russia
- Uncovered generation 3 is pretty rare in Omsk, Tomsk, Arkhangelsk, Komi, Sakha, Magadan, Yamalo-Nenets and Murmansk
- Long antenna fall coverage (especially on minor roads) is most common in Kaliningrad, Bryansk, Tula, Belgorod, Krasnodar, Chelyabinsk and Altai Krai/Novosibirsk. This coverage is sometimes white car in chelyabinsk and tula, and is usually white car in Altai Krai and bordering.
- Other than the downtown car; short antenna stopped going east at the Krasnoyarsk/Irkutsk border.
- C type short antenna is never east of eastern Kirov. A type antenna is never east of Orenburg. B type antenna is the least useful and can be found pretty much everywhere. Pronounced B can be found on the European border as well as Kurgan and Krasnoyarsk
- Tilted antenna is found between Karelia and Stavropol.
- White car is mainly east of Amur (not Sakhalin), Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, Tula and Oryol.
- Silver car (which appears similar to white car but with a bigger blur on the brakelight) is mainly Saratov, Volgograd, Tula, Krasnodar and Adygea
- May coverage can be in most places but in max eastern Russia it’s in Jewish Autonomous or Amur, and slightly less east in Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and Kemerovo.
- In long antenna may coverage in European Russia it’s mainly north east of moscow or Leningrad.
- In short antenna may coverage; blurred will mean Perm or Moscow, B type will mean Sverdlovsk, Kostroma or Moscow, in C type it will mean Yaroslavl, Vologda or Moscow. A type will mean Moscow
JSONs
Long Antenna JSON
https://map-making.app/view/405116
Short Antenna JSON
https://map-making.app/view/405117
Gen 4 JSON
https://map-making.app/view/405114
Conclusion
If you made it this far then I’m proud 💀. This is my first doc so it’s not as concise as it could be but I hope the advice of using this doc while playing ABR is helpful. I do believe that this is the best way to learn this information while also getting a grasp of Russian landscapes. Just so you don’t become a meta-crutch as while it is a hard country to distinguish solely based off of landscapes there are still a lot of distinct regions that are learnable while playing ABR.
I would also recommend joining Russiacord and asking questions about the daily Russia challenge or any locations that you struggled with. We’re all happy to help and provide insights. I would also like to recommend the map “A Learnable Russia” by Illusion which is a good place to start building a strong foundation for your Russia gameplay by teaching you the most distinct landscapes.