When you click on GeoGuesser, it uploads a series of five Streetview images from Google. You can then explore short distances, and the goal is to find out where those locations are and mark them on the map. Your score is apparently determined by your distance from the actual location. I don't believe there is a time limitation.
I'm not sure what determines what distance you can "travel," but it does seem to be limited. Some of the most relevant information in the photos has been obscured (notably license plates on vehicles), but you can read many billboards and building signs.
When you place your answer on the map, you can zoom in on the target for more accurate placement (assuming you know where you're going).
The five uploads are probably random; I was helped in getting a high score by having one American and two Scandinavian locations. I tried again using Google in a separate tab to look up some words I saw and was able to raise my score to 16,801, but I don't know if that was "legal."
Start here.
Via Neatorama.
I played this game quite a lot last week, I love it. Best score without Google was about 20k, I think. Got lucky with one of the trickier places being somewhere I'd actually visited.
ReplyDeleteThen a couple of times I had a run of five pinpointable addresses and with a bit of Google managed to clear 30k. But somehow that's less fun that trying to guess where in the Midwest a certain cornfield is.
I'm not certain the locations are entirely random though - if you play enough you find repeats.
I agree they can't be really "random" because the obvious clues have been smudged. But random from their storehouse of screened locations.
DeleteIt might be better if they were in discrete sets so you could pull them up without getting repeats.
Look around in regular Google Street View: all personally identifiable details, like license plates and faces of people, are blurred to the best of their algorithms' abilities. I don't think the game tweaks the data from Google in any way.
DeleteI also suspect that the repeating spots are not an indication that they are hand-picked, but rather a result of how the pseudo-random number generator works in this game. Maybe it is seeded by a timestamp or a session number - that would make sense to me, because I've seen a few repeats when playing multiple games back to back, but never between sessions on different days. As for the fact that repeats take you to the exact same spot, it may be due to some rounding process - if a set of coordinates produced (pseudo-)randomly falls within the same general area, it always defaults to some representative spot in that area.
DeleteI guess what I'm saying is, the game took less effort to produce than it might appear. All the map and street view data is publicly available from Google, as well as the programming API that lets developers make clever use of it. This is what happens when you plug a random number function into it.
Yeah, this is an incredible game. Having Google help you seems wrong to me, though. I've only got a high of about 12,000 without help so far.
ReplyDeleteI have seen repeats, though, and since this game is getting some press, I bet the developer will continue improving it and having more locations available.
This is a fun game. I used Google a couple times. I don't think it's cheating unless they say it is (which they don't). Just a different difficulty setting.
ReplyDeleteYou did get lucky...My first go-round included such locations as somewhere in the vast swath of land that is Latin America, somewhere in a nondescript boreal forest that was being logged, and somewhere in the middle of Siberia. -_-*
When I was introduced to this game I was told, "When in doubt, guess Australia." I'm surprised at how often that works.
ReplyDeleteMy present record is 31,876 with one in Romania and one on the island of Okinawa!
ReplyDeleteThe proof? http://bit.ly/15RbjjL
Wow. Please tell me you had to Google Little Chicks Bahama Hawks to find exactly where in Alaska to put your marker...
DeleteThis is a blast! I got hosed with a selection on the plains of Kansas, but lucky with an address on the side of a semi.
ReplyDelete18,101 points on first try, using Google for some lookup on one of the questions.
ReplyDeleteThere are repeats. I often come quite close, but am stumped when I land on a 2 lane road in scrub pine. Could be anywhere in the boreal forest all the way around the globe. Also mistook the Agean for the Caribbean.
ReplyDeleteI got about 12k but didn't cheat by leaving the page. I kinda got shafted though. 3 of mine were in the middle of nowhere with almost no signage: 2 in rural anywhere-desert Australia, and one in rural Brazil. The rest were all towns in Brazil. I got all the countries right at least. At work so I didn't spend much time before I gave up and guessed. Very fun!
ReplyDelete32282. I think the maximum must be around 33K, because I was 30 meters away and got a 6477. I have another 32K and a 29K as well. I think I'm done, because the level of precision required to top that at this point is getting irritating, and it becomes a different game. I got within a meter on one of my first few games, but didn't pay attention to the score. Had I done so, that was likely a max - Though there may be other factors besides distance that they don't mention.
ReplyDeleteIt is frustrating, because you sometimes have to go a long way over boring territory to get any sort of clue, and they are intentionally smudged. It is very satisfying when you have a particularly inspired guess based on an odd clue. the museum in Key West was one for me. Barely had to move.
In addition to Australia, I've had an unusual amount of British Columbia, Brazil, Mexico, UK, Southern Africa, and Slavic countries. I wish I had gotten the Romania one, as two of my sons are from Transylvania.
Bethany over at Bad Data, Bad! put me on to the game.
You inspired me to try again, and the second location offered to me was in front of the sign announcing Ross Castle (loc: 52.041,-9.531); working back and forth from Google satellite view I was able to put the marker within 0.004 km (4 meters) for 6479 points.
DeleteBut I think it's actually more fun without the Google, trying to guess which desert or forest you're in.
i like it with google, which is only of limited help in some locations. it makes you all detective-y to try to find the clues and then interpret them.
ReplyDeletei had to flat out guess kansas, though. got within 20 miles just on hunch.
Curse you, Stan! CURSE YOU!
ReplyDeleteThere's absolutely NO chance I'm going to get any work done today. None.
And yes, I accept that Googling for clues is probably cheating but I do it anyway. I always wondered if I could figure out where I was if I were set down in some random spot in the world.
Okay, odds are I could say "the ocean" and be right most of the time but you know what I mean.
TYWKIWDBI, ruining professional careers, one blogpost at a time...
DeleteSeconding Amy's curses. This is too fun. Broke 21,000 with no Googling and it sure is hard to not keep going when that new round's image comes up. It helps some to know which countries have the most Street View mapping. Some, like Brazil, show up often because there is almost complete coverage. Others, like Germany, have very little due to political restrictions. No Africa, India, etc. If you see Portuguese, it's likely Brazil.
DeleteIf you widen out GMaps to a continent view and grab the Street View icon guy and scrub over without letting him go, it will display where the roads have been mapped overall. Gives you a good idea of what countries are "available."
I had made up my own game I've played for several years of widening out the view on GMaps to, say, all of N. America and without looking, zoom all the way in. Then see how many steps of zoom back it takes to be able to ID where I am. But then, I've always been a map geek. . .
It does include Africa. I just amazed myself by guessing the correct town in Botswana within 4 km.
DeleteI have gotten what must be nearly the top score, around 32k. All of my guesses were based on clues that I then used to find the exact starting point on Maps, each time getting within between 0.0x and 0.00x klicks from the correct spot.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying a self-imposed rule for fun now: instant guess. No moving except to turn, no zooming, just gut feel guess based on the scenery. I have nowhere NEAR the travel expeience to be good at it, so it should prove enlightening.
Oh, and yeah, I won't be very productive this week. Thanks (again) Stan. The last gamebomb you dropped on me was way back when with that gravity game.
Have you guys been able to travel along the roads as far as needed to find valid clues? It seemed to me that I would reach endpoints beyond which I couldn't "drive". I don't know whether that reflects limitations in the Google database, restraints imposed by the game developers, or clicking errors on my part.
ReplyDeleteStan,
DeleteThere shouldn't be any restrictions on movement other than the Street View mapping itself. If you get to an end where you can't go further, there will only be one little arrow icon pointing back the way you came. That means that's as far as the camera truck went. Usually, that's because it's a minor road on further, or it became private property. Drives me crazy sometimes when you can get right up to a park entrance, but can't go in to see the views.
I've traveled miles, though, on farmland scenes where I'm downright desperate for a clue. Would'a sworn I was in Texas on my last ranchland, but it was N. Dakota :D
I did, however, get a strange location just now. A snowy park with lots of people somewhere in South Korea with no navigation icons at all. I could rotate, but not move anywhere. Still guessed it pretty close, though. Must have been a 3D version of one of the Panoramio photos instead of navigable streets.
Tx, David.
DeleteMy wife claimed that once she was dropped "into someone's backyard" where she had no clues at all, and nowhere to "drive." I didn't see it, but she said that there was really no way out.
ReplyDeleteYeah man the same thing happened to me but I could use the arrows to go up and down the stone paths in the back yard, I shit you not
DeleteGot 20k w/ no google assistance at all, was able to get a couple of them really close (one within 4 meters) based on some fortuitous sign placements.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.geoguessr.com?s=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%3D%3D
On my son's recommendation, I played this this week and did not enjoy it whatsoever. I played about 5 games. Nearly half the locations were in remote places in South America - just a gravel or secondary road with flatlands and no features whatsoever in any direction. No signs, no houses, usually a wire fence. Ones in South Africa looked exactly the same - no useful features. My son said I should go down the roads. RIght - in the middle of nowhere, how far do I go, just to "play" a game with no clues? How far can one click forward at a time? If I am 20 miles to the nearest sign, maybe 100 clicks? 200? 500? what is the fun in that?
ReplyDeleteIt seems like a decent game, but not without clues available.
The ONE time in FIVE games where there were actually clues to work from, I was 4 km off. That one score was higher than any of my other entire games.
I give the game 0 points.
This game needs an alternate scoring system, in which speed of guess counts for a lot of points. Then you would be trading off whether to use time (and lose points) by going down that road, or instead take a quick guess about what corn-growing midwestern state you are in, or what scandinavian country, or what left-hand driving red-clay-soil part of Australia or South Africa.
ReplyDelete