The present disclosure describes approaches to camera re-localization that improve the accuracy of re-localization determinations by performing simulated consistency checks for three-dimensional maps. Client devices associated with users of a location-based application transmit image scans to a game server, which divides the received scan data into mapping sets used to generate 3D maps of environments and validation sets used to test the accuracy of the maps. To perform the testing, the game server identifies query scans in the validation set having GPS coordinates within a threshold distance of the mapped location and uses the 3D map of the environment to generate a pose estimate for each frame. The results of the localization queries are analyzed by comparing differences between the localization pose estimates and differences between the poses of independent pairs of frames in the query scan to evaluate the accuracy of the 3D map.