The "where in the world are you?" game

[mc ukrneal]

A bit of thread duty: It's not fair to throw in an island which barely exists!

I got one like that. Knew it was Asia, but discovered there were some islands east of Taiwan. Cute little game.

[Opus106]

I got one like that. Knew it was Asia, but discovered there were some islands east of Taiwan. Cute little game.

Mine was off Japan. And it has just appeared for a second time in the same round!

[MishaK]

This is pretty sweet. I just got a spot in Saskatchewan within 50km and another in Norway within 150km only to be off by 17200km by confusing Honduras for Indonesia. 

[Holden]

17676   NEW LEADER!!!!

None of the sites were in Australia

[The new erato]

Game finished!

You got 20241 points in total.



Canada, USA, Mexico, Brazil, Chile.

EDIT: Game finished!

You got 23918 points in total.

[Brian]

EDIT: Game finished!

You got 23918 points in total.

Holy christ. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

My high score purely on intuition is around 16,000, but I got one higher than that when I was placed right in front of "Brisbane Whale Watching Tours" and Amsterdam Centraal station.

[mc ukrneal]

Holy christ. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

My high score purely on intuition is around 16,000, but I got one higher than that when I was placed right in front of "Brisbane Whale Watching Tours" and Amsterdam Centraal station.

Sometimes luck is better than knowledge. 24,739. I find the endless road surrounded by barren landscape to be particularly difficult. That sort of picture can be almost anywhere in the world. Based on the scores, 30k should be possible, so I expect someone will exceed my score before the day is out.

[DaveF]

Wheee, what fun!  First ever game scored 13701, with a few laughs along the way - the road through the pine forest and lakes practically had Tapiola playing in the background, the lakeside scene with Swiss flags flying was quite easy (although Lucerne rather than Geneva - about as far wrong in Switzerland as possible), the signpost "Maseru 20" was helpful if you happen to know the capital of Lesotho - but the beat-up city with major traffic problem and Italian graffiti was not Naples but Rio - Portuguese, bah!  I can see that instead of me telling my son to stop playing on the computer, it's going to be the other way round...

[The new erato]

Game finished!

You got 31913 points in total.

I kid you not.

[North Star]

You got 20479 points in total.

Damn, I got the same tiny Pacific isles again, and chose the wrong ones, about 1500 km off.

[Brian]

Game finished!

You got 31913 points in total.

I kid you not.

Where were the places?

[The new erato]

Peggys Cove in Nova Scotia, an Alaskan village, a Brazilian town, somewhere in Canada (Saskatchewan) and damn if I remember the last one. I was lucky enough to avoid the endless plains with nary a sign, and patient enough to explore until I was pretty sure where I was. I nailed a couple of the places to within 50 meters, and missed none by more than a few kilometres.   

[DaveF]

Do we need some rules to this game?  For example, are you only allowed to turn on your axis, or can you wander 20 miles down the road until you meet a sign saying "Welcome to Pig's Knuckle, the Jewel of West Virginia"?  If you find yourself outside Llanllywchllyn railway station, are you allowed to google it?  I think a subcommittee should be formed.

A couple of things I've noticed: if in doubt, it's probably south-eastern Brazil; and for the very ambitious, if you recognise a place, as I have once (Tobermory, isle of Mull) it's worth zooming right in and nailing it to the nearest metre, rather than taking a large-scale swipe at it and throwing away points for being 1.4 km out.  As we know, points mean prizes.

[The new erato]

As we know, points mean prizes.

Are you into wine?

And your othe points are well taken. Turning around and gusseing is ine thing, exploring is quite another. I've played quite a few bits now, and the Americas turn up over 50% of the time, with the rest dominated by Asia (mainly Japan, Korea and some Pacific islands) as well as Australia, and only the occasional foray into Europe (I've seen Spain, Italy, Norway and Finland) and Africa.

[Brian]

My rule is pretty simple: no Googling, and all else is OK. I was just able to identify a suburb of Durban, South Africa, by cruising around almost every street until I found a Rand Discount Mart, and then looked for places along the oceanfront to find the town of that name. Then I got dropped next to a sign that said Durban Botanical Gardens. But despite the Double Durban I only managed 19,000 (a new record for me).

I've gotten much better at identifying, e.g., random towns in Brazil, but not where in Brazil they are.

Also nailed Krasnoyarsk.

I've been on a dirt road in Botswana twice and my friend has been on the same too.

And I have been dropped in one location I knew - Santiago de Compostela. Closest I've gotten is "0.25 km," in the Durban suburb.

Do we know if it counts to where you are at the time or where you started that hand?

[The new erato]

I was in Santiago as well. It counts from where you were originally dropped, so if you wander around you need to take thet into account.

Edit: and how vast and desolate large areas of North America are!

[Brian]

Edit: and how vast and desolate large areas of North America is!

And don't forget, more or less identical. I'm from the midwestern USA, so I'd expect to be okay at identifying it, but I'm usually off by hundreds of miles misidentifying Illinois as Pennsylvania, Minnesota as Wisconsin, or Kansas as Iowa.

[The new erato]

After exploring quite a bit (ie just guessing wildly) I have been droppes in the same places several times (3 times on the same road in Australia), so the game seems far from random.

[Brian]

"Your guess was 0.005 km from the correct location and gave 6479 points."

Looks like 32500 is the maximum score unless different parts of the world are weighted differently.

[ibanezmonster]

After exploring quite a bit (ie just guessing wildly) I have been droppes in the same places several times, so the game seems far from random.

KML don't have no random coordinate feature, but I think it should still be possible. Just generate a random coordinate with whatever language you're using and plug it in.

Of course, the difficulties would be you'd have to exclude a wide range of coordinates, since you'd constantly be landing in the ocean or an area without Street View. So filtering that much (or just including that much) would be... a lot of work. Especially for some fun site probably put together by no more than a few people.