Last year I developed a server emulator for the game - On the server's first run, it cloned all models from the official servers to a local folder. The download

Last year I developed a server emulator for the game - On the server's first run, it cloned all models from the official servers to a local folder. The download urls and the models itself were encrypted, also their urls got disabled after ~24 hours. Other informations like how big a model gets displayed inside the game world was declared inside a GAME_MASTER file. When connecting to the custom server, the client asks for the GAME_MASTER file and the models as needed. It was pretty fun to edit these and send the players custom models like a GIANT snorlax or a red pikachu. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the GAME_MASTER file even contained a "model signature" to trigger a forced model update, so it's possible to overwrite already cached models. In the first weeks Niantic broke the model of Starmie (it turned full black) and I'm pretty sure they fixed it without a full game update. You can checkout the emulator project here: https://github.com/maierfelix/POGOserver https://github.com/maierfelix/POGOserver