Excellent article. And a great opportunity to share one of my favorite scifi worldbuilding artifacts: the 4K matte painting used for the brief view of Manhattan during the take-off sequence:

http://web.archive.org/web/20161007133354if_/http://digitald...

The overall vision for the city is implicit but wildly creative: sea levels have dropped significantly, with the architecture of the city spreading across the newly-exposed land and leaving original structures like the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan's skyscrapers, and the Statue of Liberty towering above the landscape. There are also oodles of tiny details scattered throughout the image -- you can pore over it for a good 10 minutes and still find more to appreciate. Very cool of Digital Domain to share it originally.