Exploring Veo 3's Capabilities for Generating Urban Traffic Scenes in 76 Cities Worldwide

Abstract

This study explores the potential of Google Veo 3, a generative video model, to synthesise 8-second dashcam-style urban traffic scenes based solely on text prompts in 76 cities across six continents. YOLOv11x was used to count road users, traffic lights, and stop signs, revealing variations across cities: Karachi had the most objects detected (79), while Muscat had only four cars. Audio analysis using dBFS showed that Montevideo was the loudest, while Copenhagen was the quietest. Through a qualitative visual analysis, the authors assessed and confirmed the perceived authenticity of most traffic scenes and highlighted AI errors, including the inability to handle non-English languages in these videos. Moreover, we compared 10 synthetic videos of New York City and Kampala, each, and verified that Veo 3 is consistent. To summarise, Veo 3 is capable of synthesising authentic, logical traffic scenes worldwide; nevertheless, it still poses non-negligible errors.