Distribution of galaxies from DESI DR1, S2, and in five nonoverlapping geometry-matched cylinders selected from FLAMINGO at z = 0.15. The top-left panel shows galaxies within an R = 290 h⁻¹ Mpc cylinder in DESI; the next five panels show galaxy positions from FLAMINGO including redshift-space distortions. The middle row shows FLAMINGO galaxies in real space without redshift-space distortions. The bottom-left panel shows galaxies in S2 at its fiducial scale, the next five panels show the FLAMINGO density field sampled by dark-matter particles. The amount of structure in DESI DR1 is visually similar to that in FLAMINGO galaxy catalogs with redshift-space distortions included. Without redshift-space distortions, the clustering is weaker and the clustering in the particle distribution is the weakest. By contrast, at its fiducial scale, S2 shows a very strong excess of structure, especially compared to particle-based mocks.