GeoGuessr / Map-Race

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

http://geoguessr.com/

A game in which you are given a random location on Google Street View and have to explore around to try to figure out where it is.

This is my best attempt:

[opebo]

Neato!

My first score!

[opebo]

How do you post the image of this?

[Kitteh]

My first score.

The first one was easy: one of the buildings had Belgian and Flemish flags flying. The second one was obviously Scandinavian scenery: I guessed Finland and it turned out to be Sweden. The third and fourth I blew: in the third I thought I saw a Texas flag flying and it turned out to be New Brunswick and in the fourth I had no idea so I guessed Southern US and it turned out to be Brazil. I saw Japanese lettering on the fifth, but only did okay because I guessed roughly the middle of Honshu and it turned out to be Hokkaido.

[opebo]

Very interesting dr101 - I think if you compare our scores, which are very, very close, and our maps, which are quite different, it is reasonable to make the assumption that your single 'dead on' guess made up for your several 'way off' guesses - in contrast to mine, earning a similar score for three 'near misses' and two moderately off guesses.  So, I think we can say that you get a very fat score total for a 'hole-in-one'?

[Kitteh]

Very interesting dr101 - I think if you compare our scores, which are very, very close, and our maps, which are quite different, it is reasonable to make the assumption that your single 'dead on' guess made up for your several 'way off' guesses - in contrast to mine, earning a similar score for three 'near misses' and two moderately off guesses.  So, I think we can say that you get a very fat score total for a 'hole-in-one'?

Yep. Actually, I took it a second time, and did slightly better, with a different pattern.

Here are the results from the second time. The first time was clearly Polish; I had no idea where in Poland so I guessed roughly in the middle of the country and did pretty good. The second looked Appalachian but was actually the UP of Michigan; that was fairly bad. The third had French lettering, and one of the store signs said "Isere". IIRC that is a region in France, and so I made my best guess of where I thought it was and turned out to be close. The fourth I got lucky: it was distinctly Rust Belt so I guessed Central Ohio and coincidentally it was very close (that was my best guess; but it was a lot of luck: it could have been anywhere in Ohio, most of Pennsylvania, etc so I guessed Ohio as the rough middle point). The fifth was interesting: the signs had Cyrillic lettering but there was also an EU flag flying. I guessed Latvia because IIRC there are some Russian-speaking areas there, but it turned out to be Bulgaria. I had forgotten that Bulgaria was another Cyrillic area of the EU. That was my worst guess.

None of my guesses were as close as that one great guess in the first test, but my score got better because I didn't have any totally terrible guesses. So instead of one great guess, two mediocre ones, and two horrible ones, I had two very good guesses, one mediocre one, and two fairly bad ones. Interesting. This game is fun c:

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

For whatever reason I'm getting a ton of locations in Manitoba.

[MaxQue]

You're lucky, I just entered the game and got the middle of a field. There is fields pretty much anywhere in the world (apparently was a bit east of Dusseldorf, Germany).

EDIT: Got 10901 points, with terrible things (a field in Germany with no clue to find it, some university with Korean signage (I mistook it for Japanese, through), some city with an sign ending by .br, some random Russian street and some highway with an Alberta sign (for Leitch Colliery, which I never heard about))

[MaxQue]

For whatever reason I'm getting a ton of locations in Manitoba.

It's huge and as lots of pictures of empty roads.
I feel the pain, I have the same issue, but with rural Montana. Nothing against it, but rural Montana is pretty non-descript.

EDIT: 23645 (here, probably won't ever get better than that, since I got so lucky (a Illinois crossroad with the numbers of the roads and to which city they led, a quarantaine station on the Western Australian border (why they have them? any australian can help? I'm very surprised at that.) and a downtown with an huge sign "Ketchitan, the 1st Alaskan city" or something like that.

[free my dawg]

First one I got some long ass highway in Manitoba. I just randomly guessed North Dakota and got 2271 points. Next is a very obviously Russian city. I did some Google fu on one of the shops, found one in Yekaterinburg, and was off by 1000 km. Some crazy Russian city. This was easier. I found a sign called Hess Creek, looked for more signs, and more Google-fu and the MPH sign led me to believe it was in eastern Alaska. I was only 36 km away and got 4407 for that one. Halfassed another Russian city. Turned out to be Volgograd of all places. I guessed the middle of Ukraine. Yay, I guess? Another 2000 points. Googled a bit for the last one. Holy ****. This looks like a road I knew. Still clicked and Googled and it turned out to be Mississippi. I guessed. Six kilometers away.

[Hash]

A good tip is that if the image quality is blurry, it's probably from the US. Most rural US imagery is still from the first StreetView cams which were low quality.

[MaxQue]

A good tip is that if the image quality is blurry, it's probably from the US. Most rural US imagery is still from the first StreetView cams which were low quality.

You would have guessed than since it's Google home country, they would have managed to pass again since then (since the first StreetView cams were a couple of years ago).

[traininthedistance]

Australia is killing my scores here.

On the bright side, I was able to pinpoint one location exactly- it was a highway interchange in the Everglades, complete with nice and legible signage.

[Dereich]

I was incredibly lucky to get a very scenic location in Mallorca with a road sign right next to it. Its Norway that keeps ruining it for me. Still, not too shabby.

[free my dawg]

I was lucky and got a location on a culdesac near a high school. 0.02 miles away. The problem is it threw me into a location where I couldn't move so I had to quit.

Next one was in a fairly precise location. Googled a bit and found three intersections somewhere in Iowa. OF course, if I go backwards I find a giant sign with "WELCOME TO SABULA" plastered on it. Lots of time wasted for 6000+ points. Next one is a distinctly Spanish city. I guessed Seville. Turned out to be a suburb of Seville. 3996 points. Next one had a ****ton of signs with Salen on them, googled and found Salen, Sweden. More signs for Cisterna di Latina. Google fu and 6645 points. .1 km away. San Simeon again. I Google, I pinpoint it, and this happens:



Is 27620 the record?

[Donerail]

One looked very Irish but the only thing with any kind of writing on it was a truck for a frozen food distribution service apparently HQed in Dublin. Guessed Dublin; ended up being Moville or something - the bit of Ireland north of Northern Ireland. 2725. Second was a beach - the sign said Buffalo Bay, which is a campground on Lake Superior in Wisconsin. But... turns out there's another one. In South Africa. 104 points, 14K kilometers off. Third looked somewhat like Africa, but the sign said Australia (some desolate western wasteland). Got it on the nail, 6471 points. 4th was somewhere agricultural. It was a bright day so signs were blurry, but it looked kinda like TN, which it was - just wrong side of the state. Actually around Union City. 2617 points. 5th was some tourism place in Russia, religiously affiliated. Could not find the exit. Plopped the point in St. Petersburg - actually Kostroma. 2336 points. Total 11917.

[Foucaulf]

My first try was around 14000 or so, but then I decided to do a score attack. I let myself google up cities, people, anything, just to obtain the highest possible score.

That record is 32278 points 32343 points. Don't think I'll be playing that game for a while.

[Enderman]

Link

I really like geography A LOT. This is my second try: First one I random guessed it to be the southern part of the southern US it was Brazil. Second I had a hunch that it was some random mountainous region of the Midwest I picked Missouri, it was Oklahoma. Third one I saw a semi truck so I looked around and found an oak leaf, knowing that Canada's symbol is an oak leaf I selected a populous region of Canada, same providence, but it was the middle part of it. Fourth I originally thought it was Europe but I did a little exploring and found some Asian sign on it, I clicked somewhere in South Korea, it was Nagasaki, Japan. Fifth one I found a car, I went a little back to see where the license plate was, it looked something like an
Asian plate, so I selected Japan. It was Belgium.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

Is the page all stretchy for everyone else? I think Mr. Enderman's link might be throwing things for a bit of a loop...

Also, Australia gets me every time. Looks way too much like Africa. What are the rules we're all following? Are Google searches of things on signs allowed? Are we allowed to move the arrows around and go on a bit of a street view journey?

[Bacon King]

My high score is 18930, no cheating

[Bacon King]

jesus christ endermann diaf

[free my dawg]

holy sh**balls

[Foucaulf]

Is the page all stretchy for everyone else? I think Mr. Enderman's link might be throwing things for a bit of a loop...

Also, Australia gets me every time. Looks way too much like Africa. What are the rules we're all following? Are Google searches of things on signs allowed? Are we allowed to move the arrows around and go on a bit of a street view journey?

This game's programming is certainly not the most elegant. I wonder if a mod can embed that link instead of having it here in its full glory?

Anyways, the game is nearly impossible to do well without navigation. Google ought not to be allowed, but the variations in the game's difficulty make it hard to put everybody on equal ground without searching. Even if you use Google the game still poses some challenge (when you, for example, start studying the contours of the road to figure out the exact location).

[Bacon King]

Is the page all stretchy for everyone else? I think Mr. Enderman's link might be throwing things for a bit of a loop...

Also, Australia gets me every time. Looks way too much like Africa. What are the rules we're all following? Are Google searches of things on signs allowed? Are we allowed to move the arrows around and go on a bit of a street view journey?

This game's programming is certainly not the most elegant. I wonder if a mod can embed that link instead of having it here in its full glory?

Anyways, the game is nearly impossible to do well without navigation. Google ought not to be allowed, but the variations in the game's difficulty make it hard to put everybody on equal ground without searching. Even if you use Google the game still poses some challenge (when you, for example, start studying the contours of the road to figure out the exact location).

Why would you need to use google to look at contours of the road? its right there in the upper right

[morgieb]

16000 is my best score.

I seem to get heaps of South American ones.