I got 13522.
I was
A tiny bit further in Alaska and Brazil, closer in Russia and way closer in the Dakotas (I guessed South)
but how the hell did you
nail TX? I guessed Texas but had no clue where White Deer was.
Well I followed Route 60 on the map, from end to end until White Deer showed up. Yes, it took way too long.
Yes, definitely. I don’t think using Google is cheating particularly, but the goals are different. If you’re allowing yourself to use Google, you should be getting within the same city. Desolate highways the world over can look fairly similar, though, and so even with Google helping it can take a while to find a helpful roadsign.
Bravo, sir.
My personal rule is:
-
No Googling or otherwise researching what I see.
-
An approximately 1 minute time limit to make my guess. So free movement, but after about a minute I have to guess.
So most of the time I’m happy to be within a couple hundred kilometers.
Before when I was trying to get super-precise scores by combining unlimited movement with Googling too tedious.
Haven’t paid enough attention, when calculating how off you were does it go by where you are when you guess or by where you started?
10284 here.
Ironically, North Dakota was the closest I got…'north central US…doomp! just a couple hundred klicks away from the actual locale! Placed the Alaska one on the Great Lakes…got pretty close with the Texas one (stuck it in New Mexico, but still pretty close…Russia I did about as well as you - nearly equidistant from the target, I dropped on the other side of Moscow. I thought the signs in Brazil were in Spanish, instead of Portuguese. >_> (Thus, since it didn’t look all that much like Spain, I defaulted to Mexico. Not my best guess ever, that.)
I managed to get 23,792 on my first game.
Caveat: after missing the first two by several hundred to several thousand km (I got the South African one but I was in the wrong part of the country, and I guessed the north shore of Australia but it was north shore of Tasmania) I decided to see if I could get enough clues to search around on Google (arguably, “cheating”).
After that mid-game “rule change”, for the final three I got one within 13 km, and the other two within .001 km!! (I spent WAY too much time comparing maps to get it almost exactly on the right spot).
So that was a mixture of “styles”; next I’m going to play searching Google on all five for one game, and then using absolutely no help on the next game.
Too addictive! Sadly, my connection is not fast enough to load all those “street views” very quickly.
What’s this? Mining museums? Chinese restaurants? People walking around as if it’s a perfectly pleasant day even though there are signs wishing people happy holidays?
We must be in southern Califor- GODDAMNIT AUSTRALIA.
The second one pissed me off. Why can I not tell Portuguese from Spanish?
23794 for me.
Discovered I was in Petrolina pretty quickly in Brazil, and that the road I was on led to Salvador, and managed to find both cities pretty quickly. A ways off in Alaska but not horrible. Found White Deer the same way as you. Cursed at how blurry ND is, but found a legible I94 sign, noticed that exit numbers pop up when you zoom in on the map section, at which point I nailed the location without trouble. Then blew the Russian location because I thought it looked Balkan.
My rules too. Best score 10,700-something.
My no-Google score: 25980. #5 killed me, but I’m happy with the first 4. I recorded my play-by-play below.
spoiler Okay, looks Portuguese, and there’s a bus that says “Brazil”. Pretty good clues. Tropical foliage, Latin American autos and vibe… Some signs… directions to Salvador. I see that on the map… will spin around this round-about… head the other way… useful signs, including “Centro Petrolina”, so probably actually in Petrolina, which I see on the map… train tracks… road sign with distance to three cities… confirms general locale… back to starting point… let’s see if I can find the river… I’m on BR-407, and I started on a traffic circle… directions suggest I’m North of the river… gosh, spent too long trying to work out the street layout… this particular roundabout has the correct layout and location relative to towns: Boom! 0.031 km (100 ft)
(2) Pretty. North American feel. Adopt-a-Highway sign, a local fire department. Mile marker 2. Seems U.S. At the Gakona River. That will come in useful. Mountains… Western N.A. Mile marker 1. Let’s go this way! Anchorage that way, Fairbanks this way. Junction with AK 4, AK 1 to the west. Tracing AK 1, I find AK 4. Need a N/S stretch of AK 4 with AK 1 to the south… I’m on Tok Cutoff.. Ohh, was also on AK 1 E. Ok, found my intersection. Gotta go ~ 2 miles east. Gokona Lodge is labeled on map! Do it: 0.018 km (59 ft)
(3) Oy. Wouldn’t wanna live here. Next to a Clint & Sons (?). Resolution too poor to read road sign. U.S. for sure. Trees are leafless. I suppose anywhere in the center of the country would work, but feels southern. Flat landscape, lots of pickups. White Deer Motor Company + weird-ass white deer statue suggests the town is called White Deer. Very desolate. Ah, a big Texas-shaped sign! I need a highway. Crappy Google camera on this trek; can’t read anything. This road is going nowhere. Jump back. Pampa and Kingswell nearby. Train tracks. What road is this?? Finally, highway signs… but I can’t read them. Hop to the other side of the road… US 60 perhaps? Scanning… got it! I see Pampa, which was either 7 or 14 miles east from the start. Scanning west… White Deer! Back to start. Poke at road signs until I can read something… Okay, probably W 3rd and the longest name in town, so… here: 0.006 km (20 ft)
(4) Feels U.S. Some Interstate highway. FedEx ground trucks support U.S. hypothesis. The images are strangely blurry. I can’t read any of the signs. (Am I being throttled by Google?) Anyway… driving… Could be a lot of places. The Midwest comes to mind first. Looks like maybe “Crystal Springs, exit 2xx”. Taking exit (which seem to be 221 now) to find an Interstate sign. I’m on I-94. And I’m 221 miles from the western terminus, so… let’s look for Crystal Springs about that far from the western edges of the states. Jesus, I-94 covers a lot of ground. Maybe another exit would be helpful. Driving… Next exit: Pettibone is 19 miles north of here. I haven’t seen anything mentioning big cities (Chicago, Madison, Ann Arbor), so let’s quickly scan the desolate areas (ND, MT). Nothing. Driving… now at Tappen. I’ve driven some 10 miles with the road heading due west. That fits ND, where I-94 is perfectly E/W around 200 miles from the border. Also Michigan. Back to start, go the other way. Fuck it, life has to move on. I need a piece of I-94 about 200 miles in from the west boarder of ND or MI. Hmm. MI is actually too small by my guesstimate. ND it is. Initial placement looks to close to Bismark to have seen no signs for it. Nudge it a bit east. Do it: 34 km.
Man, that round sucked. Not for the score, which I’m happy with. For the boringness.
(5) Hooboy. Somewhere Russian / eastern European. How on earth did Google end up here? Hi, cat. Fascinating place. No clue where I am, though. I see a big village below. Gotta get in there… Hi, chicken. Found some civilization, but I’ve got little to go on. I can sound out a few things poorly, but that’s not getting me anywhere. Ah… a billboard with a .ru TLD. Russia, then. There seem to be commuter train stations, so we need to be within spitting distance of bigger cities. Well, let’s just drop a pin near Moscow, somewhere near villages and life, and maybe a bit south based on the vegetation. Do it: 1514 km.
Final score: 25980
For the self-described non-Googlers out there: do you use the inset map as one might use a real map? E.g., if your starting point is in city X, which you’ve never heard of:
[ol][li]You find a highway that goes to world-famous city Y and city-you’ve-heard-of Z. Do you use the map to inspect the area between Y and Z?[/li][li]You find you’re on highway 111. Do you find that highway on the map and look all over it for city X?[/li][li]Some of the nearby city names have an uncommon diacritic in them. Do you check the map in a wide zoom to find countries whose cities have that character in them?[/li][/ol]
I’ve done all of that, but I never leave the webpage. (My browser’s normally in full-screen mode when I play, anyway.) If I do this and take my time, I can get within a few meters on probably 90+% of the locations.
No, that’s too much work. I just look at the scenery, the road markings, the signage, and take a guess. I might move the view a few clicks here or there, but I don’t use the “target map” to try to find exactly where I am.
Frankly, if it’s out of the US I’m glad if I’m in the same country. Inside the US, I’m glad if I’m in the same state.
I’ve now played a couple dozen rounds, and I don’t think it’s random frames from the entire database. Too many of them end up being on the waterfront or at the town’s main square, at a particularly scenic place in the Rockies. I think someone has culled a couple thousand images and loaded them up.
Hell of a lot of fun, though. I’m surprised how well we can just sense the difference between a Canadian highway and a Montana highway, between Brazil and Indonesia, Scandinavia and Canada. Only twice has my gut reaction put me on the wrong continent.
Kimble, I salute you for your thoroughness, but that’s just way too much.
I got one picture that was on a highway with a roadsign that said “Salt Lake City 120 miles” and then “Some Other Town 3 miles.” That gave me everything I needed to know without Googling, and I wanted to really nail it, but I still got bored poking around the crappy little map and trying to find that particular town on it.
That’s the beauty of this game, though - it’s exactly what you make of it.
Here’s my best non-Google score yet. Fortunately I got a city name and an English telephone number for one of the maps, so I searched the coast of England and luckily came within .21km of the view for over 6k points.
All the times I’ve played this and I still haven’t landed in a major metropolitan area…
Just beat my best .002 KM away. Still worth 6,479 points. I’m thinking either that or 6,480 is the maximum score you can get on a guess.
Certainly seems that way, I’ve just been placed in “Ketchikan, Alaska’s First City”, just a couple of posters on the first page. That being the case, I’m a little annoyed that there is so much random bleak highway, as those ones aren’t really the fun ones for me.
I’ve gotten a few placements in urban areas – the largest one was easily São Paulo.
My worst miss was one where I couldn’t walk at all. I had a view of tropical fauna, 4-story or so buildings in whites/tans, and a body of water with visible mountains on the other coast. I guessed Hawaii – it was in Tunisia. Oops.
I’m not sure which I hate more: nondescript highways or low-res images where you can’t read the signs on the side of the road.
I really do like the fact that you can play slowly or quickly and still be reasonably entertained.
With the rules I mentioned upthread, my high score is 32391, with [these](http://www.geoguessr.com/? s=eyJ0b3RhbFBvaW50cyI6MzIzOTEsInZlcnNpb24iOjEsInJvdW5kcyI6W1sicm91bmQiLCJsYX QiLCJsbmciLCJnTGF0IiwiZ0xuZyJdLFsxLDQ1LjYxOTgzOCwtNzkuNDEyMTY3MDAwMDAwMDEsND UuNjE5ODE1NzI4ODAwNTEsLTc5LjQxMjI2OTU5MjI4NTE2XSxbMiwtMjMuNjkyNTA5LDEzMy44OD Q1Mjg5OTk5OTk5MywtMjMuNjkyNDQ3Mzc1NDEyMjY0LDEzMy44ODQ1ODcyODc5MDI4M10sWzMsMz IuODY2ODM0LC0xNy4xNjU2ODYwMDAwMDAwNSwzMi44NjY3ODI3MjY0Mzc5NywtMTcuMTY1NzQwNz I4Mzc4Mjk2XSxbNCwzNS41MTkxMzgsLTg4LjI3NjEyNjk5OTk5OTk3LDM1LjUxOTE4MTA0Mzk0OD csLTg4LjI3NTgzMzEyOTg4MjgxXSxbNSwyNy43Mzg3NjUsLTE1LjU5NTQyNDk5OTk5OTk3NywyNy 43Mzg3NzAwMzI5MDk2MywtMTUuNTk1NDQ2ODI1MDI3NDY2XV19) locations. My personal playthrough on location D is in the spoiler below:
[spoiler][First view] Hm. This looks kinda like middle-of-nowhere Tennessee (my home state). Let’s go east.
[Small blurry sign with a large “9” over 3 blurry characters] Wow. That’s the same format as the mile markers on Tennessee’s state highways.
[Highway signs showing “114” in a triangle] OMG! This is Tennessee! I don’t know where state route 114 goes, though. Let’s continue straight – maybe that BP station will provide some clues.
[Highway sign showing I’m on “100” in a rectangle] Holy crap! I live like 1.5 miles from that road!
It turns out I live about 100 miles from the target, though. Plus, the starting location is vague enough that I only get within 27 meters of the final location, giving me “only” 6477 points. :([/spoiler]