Dramatic city skylines and urban environments visible from New York's famous High Line have provided fresh inspiration for De Montfort University Leicester's (DMU) Game Art students.
The rich and varied scenes they saw while walking the nearly 1.5-mile route along a former railroad through the city have given them plenty of ideas for the games they plan to create in the future.
The course members are among more than 1,000 DMU students who have flown out to NYC as part of the biggest #DMUglobal trip yet staged.
They gathered photographs and generated ideas, which can later be replicated during the production of their own virtual-reality games.
The walking tour was one of the first course specific trips for the students on the New York trip, which is taking place over nearly a week.
Ross Veeble, 21 said: "I've not been here before and I'm already gaining a lot from this incredible experience.
"Seeing the variety of landscapes across the city and generating ideas for my upcoming projects has been eye-opening.
"Throughout the rest of the trip I hope to pick up many more ideas to use in my work and it's not hard to in a city with incredible scenery such as New York."
The walk began exploring the Mid-town and Chelsea urban districts, with students witnessing the towering skyline from the ground up.
The students were then taken onto the High Line to experience the incredible views, gaining different perspectives of the vast cityscape.
The 1.45 mile former New York Central railroad, has been developed into a city linear park, offering an above road level walkway through Lower and Central Manhattan.
The High Line also offers spectacular views across the Hudson River to the west at its northern most point.
Asked to take photographs and immerse themselves in the experience, many students quickly developed ideas and some even changed their plans for their final year projects because of what they were seeing.
Bethany Cox, 23 said: "There are so many raw textures such as rust and grit and New York is a truly lived in city which is constantly changing.
"It brings the modern and the old together which when I'm creating games helps to develop a charm, something rich and something believable.
"I have been taking lots of photographs which I will be using to generate surface details which when rendered will look realistic and professional."
Game Art graduates have gone on to work for recognised brands such as Rockstar Games and Ubisoft, as well as being head hunted for major architect firms to develop fly throughs.
The current cohort hope this incredible trip will develop their ideas further to produce work which will set them up for their dream career once they graduate from DMU.
Course leader, Michael Powell said: "When people are playing video games they want it to be as realistic and believable as possible and by being in a place like this, you have the visuals to recreate almost anything.
"When you're sat creating something, there is a lot of detail you may not think of, but here there is so much to take in and landscapes have changed helping to create finer detail and make everything much more relatable."
"We are thankful that our students are able to visit this incredible city and learn things which will contribute to their work. We hope to infiltrate more #DMUglobal opportunities into the programme in the coming years."
Posted on Thursday 5 January 2017