Checked out my Casse-Pattes ride this morning on Strava. Way and behold, I found out that France is actually in the pacific. In New Caledonia to be specific. All this time I thought it was in Europe. One learns something new every day :).
Haha, well the France world isn’t an exact replica modeled from real roads in France so they had to put it somewhere else, just like Watopia. However, the Paris world is an exact replica so you will find that in the correct place on Strava.
Edit: other than the Ven-Top route which is a real replica of Mont Ventoux
I noticed that also when checking my rides in Strava.
A little weird.
It’s not really France per se, which is still in Europe 
, but more like a France-themed cycling virtual amusement park—note that none of the roads are real GPS-based French roads (and so would never correctly overlay any actual French roads in Strava). It probably explains why Paris is its own world and not part of the “France” map, since the Champs course is a GPS-true replica of the IRL location.
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^^ This is exactly right.
Plotting the GPS coordinates to someplace surrounded by a lot open water also opens the possibility of expanding the Virtual France map in a distant future without conflicting GPS coordinates of the real France. Watopia was expanded like that - you’re riding on the Pacific Ocean if you look at some routes on Strava.
I really hope this wasn’t the real reasoning behind making Paris it’s own map. 
I rarely race and maps like Paris are extremely boring. I did the route badges and find it unlikely I will ever be riding it again. I have never even ridden crit city.
Paris should have been part of France imo.
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Having routes which incorporate other roads and finish on the Champs-Élysées would be nice, for instance.
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Would be beautiful, but how are you going to link fake (i.e. non-GPS-true) roads with real (i.e. GPS-true) ones? Your Strava activity would show you in New Caledonia one moment and then instantaneously transported to actual IRL Paris the next. Maybe the question is Why not use real roads all the time, instead of creating roads from scratch and then placing them in the middle of the ocean to avoid IRL GPS conflicts? I’d guess (certainly don’t know for sure) that it’s much more difficult to recreate virtual GPS-true roads in-game for some reason 
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hmm, so new caledonia to vanikoro is about 650 miles… plenty of new roads to ride when you connect france to watopia!?
Why does it matter what your GPS coordinates look like? It’s a virtual ride. Put the entire route over the ocean. You don’t need to send the real Paris gps coordinates.
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I don’t see any reason to disagree, and yet they did use/put the real Paris coordinates.
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Maybe it’s a licensing issue that they couldn’t use real roads in France, without a hefty fee.
Why isn’t Paris in the middle of the ocean too? It could have been linked to the France world then.
Also, how does the London world work? Some of it is real world GPS routes and then the Surrey area is just tracked on. Surely the same could have been done for France?
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And don’t call me Shirley. 
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That’s some straight bush humor right there
Classic
Minor bug…but when rides for France are uploaded to Strava, the coordinates translate to New Caledonia in the South Pacific, Coral Sea, not France/Europe. Lat/Longs are evidently corrupted.
It’s not a bug, it’s intentional, because they don’t 100% correspond to real roads, unlike Paris.
Wait til you all learn about the Surrey Hills!
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Isn’t it because apart from Ventoux all of it is made up, whereas the centre of London is accurate
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