Results! Turns out there’s a free site called OpenGuessr that’s just the classic gamemode we all know and love, but you can just play it for free like normal.
#the nature of humanity is just that every so often someone accidentally invents Find the Airport again #(or possibly on purpose) #GeoGuessr #disappointed permanent resident of The Future #(people in the notes are saying Google was charging them shitloads of money for all the Street View use and they had to recoup it somehow) #(however that does not explain why anyone would want Unique Skins) #games #cows #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
I’m watching an old livestream vod of some people who are really good at Geoguessr (because, I dunno, that’s where I’m at in my life now) and it’s really funny – so partially there’s this incredible real-world knowledge of, like, looking at the landscape and being like “I’m getting Spain vibes”, or knowing not just the flags but the colors of the flags, or the one guy who’s memorized all the traffic dividers of many different countries…
But then there are also these Goodharted things in from how google maps works in different countries, and it’s just thrown in alongside the others. It paints this wildly Nightvalian picture of the world. Such as:
Germany loves to make entire buildings blurry.
In Nigeria, a car follows you around everywhere (“the follow car”, you know.)
#handy tips for playing GeoGuessr #(Street View is patchier than this makes it look) #(my village mostly doesn’t have Street View) #(but in broad strokes this looks to be pretty accurate) #next time you’re playing and land in Russia remember this map
Okay, this is a really entertaining game – it drops you at a random location in Google Street View and has you guess where you are based on your surroundings.
The ones I get right are either the ones with shop names in, so I can see the language, or the ones with distinctive geological features. (Where by “feature” I mean “type of bedrock as indicated by hill shape and/or visible outcrop”. ^_^ Quick, everybody act surprised.)
Ooh. All the sleuthy fun of Mapcrunch, but much shorter rounds and official score-keeping (though I’m not sure quite how they convert crow-flight distance to points).
Tags:
#game #a word of warning #if they drive on the left #and all the signs are in English #including the sign that says Port of East London #so you think Oh hey England! #don’t #it’s not England #it’s South Africa #you’re 9800km off #(why do British colonists have such a hard time coming up with original names for their towns)
Brinens and Things 