I initially thought this wouldn't work, since you can't take pictures in all directions simultaneously in GTA V, and moving the camera in different directions m

I initially thought this wouldn't work, since you can't take pictures in all directions simultaneously in GTA V, and moving the camera in different directions might add artifacts from moving objects and/or cause items out of view to despawn entirely. A Google streetview car can take pictures of all directions simultaneously, thus avoiding the "stretched dog" or "double person" panorama problems that can happen from stitching shots together. And things tend not to despawn in real life, though there are plenty of examples of anomalies on Google maps. It turns out you can follow the same car over a long stretch of road in this GTA Geoguessr, leading me to believe your intuition is correct.