Discussion: Geoguessr

Many of you might appreciate this--definitely the best Google maps based game I have seen. Click here to start playing, but be warned--it can be very addictive!

And you know you have made the big time when you are mentioned here.

Nooooo! Don't let this get out. It's ruined my life!

This game needs a time limit. Because for a perfectionist like me, I gotta get that pin exactly in the right spot.... and sometimes that takes a while.

Time limit, or a click limit. Something like: you can only make 10 clicks moving/zooming + no text searching.

Won't make much of a difference when your location is inside a restaurant on a Caribbean cruise ship, but otherwise it'd be a real limitation.

Did you get one on a cruise ship?

The weirdest one for me was on an unmapped snowmobile track on Svalbard.

Also, I keep getting ones in Alaska, Yukon, and NWT. I groan every time one of them comes up, because I can recognize the vegetation immediately as "far north", but there's rarely any other useful info.

I assume it was a cruise ship since I couldn't move anywhere, couldn't see outside, and the pin was in the sea NW of Cuba. The competitive me was not amused, but the nerdy me was.

Once I'd got all five pins within a single-digit number of meters by using the full resources of the internet (chiefly, looking for names to search for on Google Maps), I decided the proper rules were that you can't move the location of the camera. You can zoom and rotate, just not click the arrow keys (or double click to move). Depending on the locations, this can still be easy, or very, very hard.

Most interesting location I've seen so far was in the Bonin Islands in Japan. Given they can apparently only be accessed by a 25 hour sea voyage from Tokyo, unsurprisingly they looked unfamiliar.

I think Pink Socks is right - allow full google but give a time limit for each one. For sure the most fun combo!

I got a castle in Wales, and have a growing hatred of the Australian outback.

I have also elected to use the no moving or zooming rule, only twirling around in the same spot. I didn't Google anything either. Sometimes vegetation, types of cars, direction of traffic, direction of major water can all contribute to a pretty good guess!

Once I'd got all five pins within a single-digit number of meters by using the full resources of the internet (chiefly, looking for names to search for on Google Maps)

Ok good, I'm not the only one. I maxed out the score once, and I had to figure out how to type in Cyrillic for the 5th one. One of them had nothing searchable (north slope Alaska), and I actually used some orienteering terrain recognition skillz using Terrain View to narrow the search.

Some of my friends say that using a text search is cheating, but I've also been able to find precise locations by just moving around a little bit more. One of those was at a trailhead parking lot in Scotland that showed a regional trail map with lakes and such.

Another fun variation is the "minute game" where you have to finish the entire game within a minute. At ~12 seconds per guess, it's pretty hectic.

If I were to make "house rules" for myself, I'd say a 25-minute game, no text searching, but another window of Google Maps is allowed.

Most interesting location I've seen so far was in the Bonin Islands in Japan.

Wow, that is way out there. Looks like there should be a smoke monster or something.

So Pink Socks, have you ever gotten the error message to say EXACTLY 0 km? One of my students at my school accomplished this feat yesterday, which I had not seen before.

I made a serious attempt last night to get a 0 km error myself, but after about 30 minutes work, wound up with 0.001 km. Doh!

I've gotten it to say 0 km twice, no decimals, but nothing that said "error".

Does anyone know where the cutoff is for a perfect score (6479 points)? It's somewhere in between 6m and 40m (6476 points). The map of Svalbard doesn't show any roads where the snowmobiles captured the Street View, so 40m was as good as I could do there.

I just looked around and took a stab at where I thought it was, and only got the wrong country once (somewhere in a field in Alberta, and I just stuck it in the middle of the US). I think one round may suffice for me.

I had one guess that I put in the Ukraine but it was Khazakistan. What interested me most about that location was that a guy walking in to a grocery store seemed to be wearing an old Manitoba Orienteering top (yellow and brown).

Using google resources and doing some traveling along the roads seems to be the only meaningful way to play the game. Otherwise it is just bingo.

It wouldn't work on my computer. Shame, I was really looking forward to contributing to the meaningful discussion in this thread.

"One of my students at my school accomplished this feat yesterday, which I had not seen before."

Steve, say your not giving this as homework! Must be the end of the year.

I was really looking forward to contributing to the meaningful discussion in this thread.

Too bad, as I was really hoping that a native could explain to me the best way to determine your precise location, when transported to a dirt road in the middle of the outback.

And you are quite right George, after the AP Computer Science test date has passed in early May, I tend to lack motivation to do any more serious teaching. We were all doing this in class!

The best I've done is .59km, when I turned around and saw a sign that said "Welcome to Ketchikan". I used Google the first time, but I've just moved around and zoomed in since. It's remarkable how similar parts of Australia look like South Africa.

OK, so I played a few more rounds last night. Got it within 33m on one try, and should have done about as well one other time.

I'm glad they put in so many scenes of obscure villages in Russia and nondescript roads in Brazil as those are the things that best get me away from the game.

I assume that the locations are randomly selected, and it just so happens that a lot of places are obscure and nondescript...

I suspect it's a mixture, that is, that they somehow salt it with prominent places. I skimmed through a few more games, and although there were a bunch of nondescript rural roads, I didn't see much in the way of suburbia (which I would expect), and there were a number of completely recognizable spots, like in front of a visitor center in RMNP, or a courthouse in Toronto, or a casino right on the state line in Nevada. I was able to get within 10 meters on those without even moving. (And when all I saw was trees, I just picked a country and tossed a pin in the middle of it.)

Rob was plonked in the middle of a Mayan temple a few weeks ago, so I'm pretty sure there's some seeding.

Yeah I haven't played too much but I've seen some places a few times, including inside a restaurant, so I don't think it's all random.

It seems weird that StreetView has coverage of so much of Brazil, and Russia, and the Australian outback, and entire small towns in Saskatchewan and rural Sweden, but in, for example, the town where I grew up 50 miles outside of Boston, they've got just the numbered highways and three other roads.

underwater?

I had to figure out how to type in Cyrillic

If you keep spending enough time on it, you should probably think of installing a keyboard driver (for English typers I recommend яверты/яжерты instead of the usual йцукен). Otherwise translit.cc.

I got the same underwater scene. The sea turtles are the key clue here.

Shit! Now I'll be playing all night to get the sea turtle scene!

Finally got a street I've driven down! Didn't recognise it! Argh!

Windows 7 comes with Cyrillic keyboard drivers, or you can use Google Translate.

It must be a limited set of locations; I just got the same place in Yekaterinaberg I got in my first game.

Another site where you get random Street View locations is mapcrunch.com. You can select which countries you want to see and whether you get only urban locations or not. If you turn off the labeling, you can guess the location.

Still haven't found the sea turtles!

Since I was given the same spot in Ketchikan in two separate games, I can conclude the algorithm is not drawing randomly from the entire Street View database, rather from a somewhat large set of chosen locations from it. The sea turtle scene also gives this away.

Why can't I get those sea turtles?
I've had enough terrain in Western Australia that looks like Queensland that looks like Brazil that looks like Botswana that looks like Western Australia to last me a lifetime.

I haven't found a need to type anything in Cyrillic. I just read the signs aloud and Google them with the Latin alphabet (and I tend to gets hits that I can actually read).

You can now make your own quizzes: http://geosettr.com/

I actually got a place I recognized, though I've never been there: the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

I also got a road I'd been on, highway 491 near Mesa Verde.

I got one that would have been very cool if I had solved it, a back road on Tybee Island in Georgia. I've been there, and if I had wandered around enough I might have stumbled across the lighthouse and known where I was. But even when I replayed the round and went looking for the lighthouse, it took a long time to track it down.

I think I can quit now. I got through a round with four spots that I pretty much nailed, to within 50 meters each (two in Alaska, one in Tasmania, and one in Poland), with the remaining one being somewhere in rural Mexico, and I threw a pin into the middle of the country and wasn't too terribly far off.

Well, somebody had to do it...
The most massively easy possible round of Geoguessr.
(For some of you, anyway.)

Got all of the parks correct, just didn't fiddle very long on the iPad to place the pins very closely. ~25k+ points.

Got 1-4 pretty close, but was clueless on #5. Took a wild stab that it was Moreau, which was more than 200 km off ...

OK, I had to try it - I´ve never been to any* of those places, but knowing (guessing) the scope I took some wild chances and was reasonably correct.

183m, 23m, 50km**, 7km and 3 km off for 27458 points isn´t too shabby I´d say.

**) #3 was a wild guess - picked the wrong park - but got it on #5 instead ;)
*) Actually, in retrospect, and ironically #3 is the only place I´ve been to (in 1982)

#5 is unfortunately not where I'd like to have put it, but it's the best spot in the vicinity that shows up in StreetView.

Antipodean payback.
http://tinyurl.com/k2os7ql

6479 - guessed which one was NZ.

11800, by not zooming in at all, just plunking a pin down in SE Oz each time, except for the one that I put between the islands of NZ (thanks for the hint, Valerie).

15140, no zooming (I did move on 5, but one click only in two directions). No other window, just tried to guess coastal/inland and flat/hilly, favoring Melbourne. In NZ, I put it sort of NW of Christchurch about halfway to Wellington.

Not sure what you mean by zooming, I was referring to the world map for guessing, that's what I didn't zoom on.

22,840 I dont move from the spot, just one spin around. 1 & 5 are well known to me (1m & 5m), 2 & 3 wasn't hard to guess the area, and 4 had to be NZ, and I knew Invis was impressed with a certain place over there, so plonked it in the general area

@J-J I thought you meant zooming in on the image (which makes no sense if there is nothing to read, I guess). I definitely zoomed in on the map. 11800 is pretty impressive then.

On J-J's challenge, I got 32343 pts (17m, 234m, 64m, 144m, 168m off). I had my suspicions about #5, looked up and down the road quite a bit, but then just took a guess in the vicinity.

12427 on Invisible's. Never been south of the equator, much less on the other side of the world.

Moving around spoils it, especially when it moves you to the other side of the airport sign :-P ... best score came from getting the obscure middle of the pacific Japanese islands twice in the same game. Most frustrating was what seemed like a town in Denmark but ended up being some replica tourist trap in California.

@TheInvisibleLog, did you set that up? I have been to all 5 of those places and they all stuck in my memory pretty clearly, going to # 3 this weekend for the South Australian Long Championships...... 27543

25, 363. I am deeply ashamed to admit that I was out by 6km on the first one. But in my defence, I don't go to that end of the map very often, and that feature is actually not precisely on the map in question!

I haven't been to the NZ site but it's on my to-do list :)

what seemed like a town in Denmark but ended up being some replica tourist trap in California

Solvang, I assume? (Been there once.)

@Tynomite... yes, I made it. Couldn't remember where Cascades is located, otherwise it would have been on the map.
@Jenny. The first one was the start location for a number of Bermuda Triangle events, one of which you attended...

Correct, but I never saw the water feature. Will the Bendigo Rocks event in July be another Bermuda Triangle?

How does one make up a quiz?
I want to make up one of sites in Ottawa and send it to my friends in the media and my former colleagues on city council. However I can't see how/ where to get started.

Link above doesn't work?

http://geosettr.com/

Okay, finally tried J-J's "easy" game. Not quick at all! Scored 32,376 without any searching. However, some of them took a lot of moving around to find the right placement. I'm particularly proud of being only 12m off on the fourth. (4m on the first, but that one really was easy.)