Join in - Geoguessr Challenge - May 30

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Join in - Geoguessr Challenge - May 30

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1aulsmith
Modificato: Mag 30, 2013, 9:05 am

bookblotter, stellarexplorer and I have been playing Challenge Geoguessr and want to invite you to play as well.

You can check out our original explorations of the game here

Here's some helpful information from bookblotter:

This is a challenging, interesting, clue building game based on Google maps and called geoguessr.
Basically the site drops you on a page with (1) a view (done by the Google Map's street/road photographers) showing what you would see if you were driving there. It can be anywhere in the world where Google has done that mapping and street photographing. (2) A world map for designating/guessing where you think you are. (3) A box in the lower right with the status and score so far.

The idea is to come as close as you can to zeroing in on the location where they dropped you in the first view shot using the world map.

You can move up and down the streets similar to the way you can using Google Map's street view.

It's really interesting and easiest if you're in a town or city (because of signs, business IDs, language, cars or other transportation, architecture, etc). If you're dropped in the middle of a rural nowhere without any stores, street or road signs or other identification, it can be quite tough to dig out clues.

You get 5 different location starts in each game, one after another as you do them. After you do all five, you get a total score. The game is pretty intuitive after you fool with it a little.

Hint: Liberal use of Google search and Google Maps in separate windows will help you zero in."

2aulsmith
Mag 30, 2013, 9:04 am

Here's my challenge.

It's a doozy and I only scored in the low 6000s (forgot to write the exact number down but I expect almost everyone to do better. I was on the wrong continent a lot.)

Whoever wins this one will get to set up next week's challenge (sometime on Thursday)

3Hagelstein
Mag 30, 2013, 10:15 am

16560. Missed some clues.

4stellarexplorer
Mag 30, 2013, 10:43 am

And this challenge ends....Sunday?

5stellarexplorer
Giu 1, 2013, 1:57 am

Ok, 28,683 for me. Got fairly close on each, with a bit of investigation.

6bookblotter
Giu 1, 2013, 3:08 am

Shall we just say that the challenge ends noon (US Eastern Time) on Monday, June 3rd since nothing was established?

Having said that, here is a pathetic tale of woe...

Round 1; 0.347 km away, 6,450 points - pretty good.

Round 2; 524 km away, 2419 points - eh. In right country. Had problems reconciling the geoguessr map with the Google map. I do wish that the geoguessr maps had a scale of miles. Although I do realized that, if you know the distance between, say, two towns, you can guesstimate it.

Round 3; 193 km away, 2809 point - another eh, although not quite so poor as Round 2. In right country.

Round 4; Computer crashed, lost my place/standing at geoguessr in general, it's 1:51 am my time and we have company staying with us this weekend, I give up. I will say that I was close to ending Round 4, zeroing in on four cities all in the same sub area and country. But can't blab at this point without divulging info.

Good night, all!

7stellarexplorer
Modificato: Giu 1, 2013, 11:26 am

I hate when that happens. I got them all within a mile or so, except the last one which I had trouble honing to closer than several miles.

8aulsmith
Giu 2, 2013, 9:24 pm

I don't mind ending the challenge on Monday, especially since I want to talk strategy. I think some of you might be getting better resolution on your pictures than I am, because I don't see how you can get within a mile or two without being able to read signs, and most of these I couldn't make out a single letter of the signs.

However, if we want to attract more people, would keeping the challenge open longer help??

My internet is still flaky, so I can't guarantee timely responses. Please continue to carry on without my input as you see fit.

9stellarexplorer
Giu 2, 2013, 10:49 pm

Many signs are blurry and I can't read them. But sometimes they are readable and helpful. Maybe we could review a particular example after Monday, to see whether you are getting poor resolution.

But why might that be? There's nothing special about my resolution, computer or Internet connection. Is there something particularly poor in your arrangement for some reason?

10aulsmith
Giu 3, 2013, 8:21 am

Maybe the problem is that you can go further down the road and I thought you could only go around in a circle? I'll talk more specifics after the deadline.

11wetlander
Giu 3, 2013, 11:39 am

Only found this thread today, so have only managed the first location.
Am within 6 metres, 6479 points.
Will miss the deadline for the others, so looking forward to the next challenge.

12bookblotter
Giu 3, 2013, 12:01 pm

>10 aulsmith: You can go anywhere you want and can get to on both Google Maps and geoguessr. Sometimes, if you're in the middle of nowhere, it takes a long, long time to get anywhere. A key to me is to try to remember as best you can where you started and what direction you have gone and, as best you can estimate, how far you have gone. After you wander around like a lost waif for a while, it does get challenging to remember, especially if you started on a featureless rural road. Stellarexplorer, I suspect, has this part down pretty well.

>8 aulsmith: Here's my take on wandering around in general. I use Google general search, Google Maps, Google Translate extensively (especially the first two) and keep them open in different windows during the search.

On Google Maps, license plates are always blurred, presumably for privacy issues. It definitely appears to me that geoguessr has software that purposely blurs some other signs that might be helpful. Some are directional signs such as an arrow with a distance to some place or the name of a business, for example. But, they don't do it 100% of the time. Sometimes signs are in plain view that are quite helpful.

When I was playing a round by myself, for example, I Google searched the name of a pharmacy in what turned out to be a small town in Mexico and the pharmacy turned out to be named after the town. And, I've found many street directional signs that were quite legible.

When I was on (see message #6 above) Round #4, I had just zeroed in on a street directional and mileage sign with 4 towns listed, including distances. That's obviously a great clue. You know the direction you're going and you can fairly well triangulate (quadangulate? --- Spell check doesn't like that word) your position. That's when my computer went on strike.

On searching businesses... Searching "Wal-Mart," for example, doesn't give you much of a clue unless you're already zeroed in pretty well. The trick is to find a business that is small and unique in name, but can be found by Google searching.

In terms of clarity of the street view image on Google Maps vs geoguessr... Google Maps is generally quite clear except occasionally in third world areas and/or taken on very overcast days. geoguessr sometimes seems to me to be foggier in resolution. I don't know why that would be other than weather conditions (Obviously, some days are clearer than others generally). I believe the article I read initially on geoguessr said they used Google Maps as their basis.

One potential image clarity issue is found by right clicking while you're on a Google Map street view. When you do that (right click), you will see "3D mode on" (or off) in the menu. I would suggest that you should always be on "3D mode on," not "off." It's much clearer. I have NOT played with the other setting possibilities you find by right clicking on Google Map's street view. Do so at your own risk!

I do make mental (that one is risky) or written notes as I go on wandering. I also try to keep notes on clues... Drive on right or left side. What is growing in the fields. Architecture. Signage styles & info. Terrain. Car makes that are predominant. People & vehicles or lack thereof. Poverty or wealth. Quality and repair of roads, bridges, etc. Language (I once found a single word that I could read on an otherwise unreadable sign of about 8 words, I searched it on Google Translate which told me that the language was Lithuanian which was correct and helpful, even though the word had nothing to do with directions.). Etc...

13bookblotter
Modificato: Giu 3, 2013, 12:43 pm

>11 wetlander: Wow, wetlander, that's quite a start. Welcome! We, I think, have kind of decided to start a challenge on Thursday each week and run it for at least three days (to have both weekdays and weekends available). So, watch for it...

And, welcome thorold as well!

It would be nice to build the playing group over time.

Just a suggestion; why don't we show each challenge title as aulsmith has done on this one, with a new pertinent date, of course.

We should let everyone pose a challenge, I would think. In the interest or democracy, of course. Maybe just take the next person that played in the current challenge alphabetically in a loop. After aulsmith, that would be me, so I'll just pass for this time because I've done it before. So apparently it would be Hagelstein.

A post script to non geoguessr players who frequent Maps and Atlases and to mcwetboy, the creator and administrator of the group. If, after a while and the challenges survive and grow - we hope - and perhaps interfere with other discussion, we could move it to a new discussion group just for the geoguessr purpose. Let's see how it goes, first, though.

If anyone wants to add anything to my post, especially the second part, at #12, they should feel free.

14thorold
Giu 3, 2013, 12:33 pm

I didn't get to this round until after the deadline (trying it on the ipad is useless, it just keeps crashing Safari) but I got 16837. I was pretty close in two places where I happened to find a roadsign (one of them even turned out to be just down the road from where some relatives of mine live, though I wouldn't have known without the sign...) but I didn't trust architectural clues enough to get the two that were in the same general region of the same continent.

15wetlander
Giu 3, 2013, 12:45 pm

Before the deadline only managed to the rough area of the 2nd (somewhere near Torsby, Southern Sweden) and the 3rd (Somewhere between Serowe and Orapa, Botswana).
12961 total for the 3.

16lorax
Giu 3, 2013, 7:05 pm

Just saw this today, so I've missed the deadline and hope I can provide spoilers. Without looking ahead at other comments:

#1: Would have gotten the right region just based on the trees visible in the initial location. A little farther down the road revealed a sign whose color and font told me that I was in public land in the US. A little farther yet found a trailhead that with Googling got me to within 0.1 km and 6475 points.

#2: The trees tell me I'm north, and the way the road is painted tells me I'm not in the US or Canada. No cars on the road, so I can't narrow it down by which side people drive on. A loooong way down the road - longer than I would have gone if this weren't a challenge, to be honest - I find a road sign, where the names of towns (none of which I recognized) told me the region, just from the apparent language. Googling those got me the location of that intersection - then I just had to guess how far I'd gone. I got to within 10 km, and 5883 points.

#3: Very different vegetation here! Palm trees, arid, and a very poor area. Lots of pedestrians - all of the same skin color, which is actually useful - and dogs and donkeys in the road. A sign painted on a building tells me that this is an English-speaking country. I eventually get to a paved road, where I see non-North-American style signage, and that we're driving on the left here, which is a clue I've used on Geoguessr before. Going farther down the road I see a sign with the name of a city I recognize, but no distance. It's a small country though, so I just plop it down and hope for the best. Within 200 km, and 2818 points.

#4: In the middle of nowhere, someplace arid with one type of tree that makes me guess a continent, though there are enough other trees I'm not entirely happy with that. Down the road a bit I see a sign that confirms that I'm not in the US, so any second-guessing there is ruled out. Down a bit more I find a sign with town names, which get me the right continent - which was not my first guess! (I've had the "South Africa or Australia"? confusion before). I google those, and get within 16 km, and 5665 points.

#5: Someplace much richer and more populated - a big paved road with nice cars! There's a big sign facing away just a bit down the road, so I go read it. Big print's not in the Roman alphabet (though I can make out enough to read a key town name). I know how far I am from a recognizable city I can find without Googling, but not on what road and Geoguessr doesn't have a map scale, so I just zoom in and hope for the best. Just over 15 km, and 5399 points.

Total: 26240. I worked harder at some of these (especially #2) than I would have for a non-challenge round.

17stellarexplorer
Modificato: Giu 3, 2013, 10:26 pm

>12 bookblotter: "After you wander around like a lost waif for a while, it does get challenging to remember, especially if you started on a featureless rural road. Stellarexplorer, I suspect, has this part down pretty well."

Actually, I just estimate as best I can unless there is an identifiable marker to go by.

I agree with with all your general approaches. I have considered downloading a Cyrillic alphabet package for use on Google translate, but that seems just a little too obsessive.

As far as democratic turn-taking in posting challenges, someone still will need to keep that in order, I would think.

I never knew about that 3D option for Google Street View. Will have to investigate!

18bookblotter
Giu 4, 2013, 12:31 am

>17 stellarexplorer: I think that the 3D view is the standard setting; don't expect a change from what you see now.

On that same facility box on Google Street View (right click on GSV), is a zoom facility for zooming in on, oh, errr, umm, say, some text on a sign that you can't easily read w/o zoom. Handy.

Also, while the Google map is up, not street view, right clicking shows an option box where you can right click on "what's here" and that will get you the latitude and longitude of the point where the cursor is located. If only geoguessr's map had such a box and info... Well, there wouldn't be much of a game.

19aulsmith
Giu 4, 2013, 9:16 am

Thanks all. These are all useful strategies.

I don't think I'm up to going too far down the road, unless the new internet provider is much fast than the current one. Also I'm interested in how close I can get without knowing a lot. For instance without traveling I got that #1 was public land in the Pacific Northwest of North America. I just wasn't sure if it was the US or Canada. And on #4 I was sure it was industrialized Eastern Europe without doing any traveling. Of course thinking #2 might be in the southern hemisphere was not a good guess. But I'm content to get lower scores in the challenge matches. This game is such a good intellectual challenge. See you all next Thursday!

20lorax
Giu 4, 2013, 9:29 am

#19:

Does Canada share the "Brown signage on public lands" marker with the US? I didn't think they did, but I haven't spent much time in Canadian national parks, either.

(I also think you mean you could easily tell #5 was industrial Eastern Europe, not #4.)

The Cyrillic signs aren't the problem for me, it's the Chinese ones. Knowing that I'm in China does very little to help me narrow it down. (The only time I've been even remotely close for a location in China was in Hong Kong, when the initial drop helpfully revealed a sign reading "Hong Kong: China's World City".)

21stellarexplorer
Giu 4, 2013, 10:10 am

>20 lorax: "Hong Kong: China's World City"

That would help narrow it down! :)

22bookblotter
Giu 4, 2013, 11:28 am

>13 bookblotter: "Maybe just take the next person that played in the current challenge alphabetically in a loop. After aulsmith, that would be me, so I'll just pass for this time because I've done it before. So apparently it would be Hagelstein."

No one protested my suggestion above. So, I am assuming that Ed Hagelstein would set up the next challenge for us on Thursday, June 6th, and ending Tuesday, June 11th at noon Eastern Time, USA. That gives us all 3 1/2 days plus.

23Hagelstein
Giu 4, 2013, 4:07 pm

No problem. I'll post one on Thursday.

24aulsmith
Giu 4, 2013, 5:32 pm

20: Hmm, the sign looked blue on my display (which is a much more Canadian-type color than American but I have no idea what they do in state parks in CA, OR and WA) so I just sort of stuck the post in midway among the redwoods.

Yes, I meant 5.

Did Google do "big" China? I've only gotten one or two Asian spots (compared to dozens from southern Africa). Also I've had no suburban streets or major cities (well I did get the Winter Palace, but you couldn't see St. Petersburg). It's either been medium-size towns or villages or the middle of nowhere. I realize there's a lot of "the middle of nowhere" on the planet, but I still wonder of GeoGuessr is doing some editing of the pool of possibles.

25bookblotter
Giu 4, 2013, 7:27 pm

>24 aulsmith: I think large portions of Asia are uncharted territory as far as Google Street View; China (proper), India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Philippines, etc. Of course, in some of those countries, the camera mounted on a tripod on car top would be taken for a mortar and the driver might come under fire, or worse. Parts (maybe most?) of South Korea & Japan are covered.

I have noted that lately, geoguessr starts in more rural areas than when I first fooled with it and it started in towns mostly. I guess we all should study up on "the middle of nowhere." Is there a book on it? :)

26lorax
Giu 5, 2013, 9:45 am

I guess that the one I had with Chinese signage was in Taiwan, come to think of it; if they don't have coverage in mainland China that's a good trick to know.

As I mentioned above I've had Hong Kong so they certainly do major cities; I think it's just that there's a lot more middle of nowhere than there are major cities.

27thorold
Giu 5, 2013, 12:46 pm

>26 lorax:
I think aulsmith's right: they must be doing some filtering over and above the built-in bias from the availability of Google data. Suburbs seem to be far less common in the results than towns and villages (when you'd expect the opposite); bridges, hotels and woodland car parks are more common than blank stretches of rural road.

28lorax
Giu 5, 2013, 1:06 pm

27>

There may be some filtering, especially of suburbs, but it's not excluding all major cities as was suggested in #24.

29Hagelstein
Giu 6, 2013, 11:31 pm

My challenge is below. I got a mediocre 16944. I don't how to compress the URL though, so here it is in all its lengthiness:

http://www.geoguessr.com/?s=eyJ0b3RhbFBvaW50cyI6MTY5NDQsInZlcnNpb24iOjEsInJvdW5k...

I

30stellarexplorer
Giu 7, 2013, 2:46 am

23129. That last one was a doozy! And I ran out of patience for it.

31aulsmith
Giu 7, 2013, 7:47 am

My internet connection is currently very slow and I'm going to be away most of the weekend, so I may have to sit this one out.

New internet on Wednesday. Yay!

32bookblotter
Giu 7, 2013, 12:03 pm

I'm on the 5th round of this geoguessr challenge. I only have one question... Do I get workmen's compensation for a tired clicking finger?

33bookblotter
Giu 7, 2013, 1:35 pm

Okay, 22805. Round 2 (0.011 km & 6478 points) and round 3 (0.53 km & 6475 points) were interesting. The 0.011 km in round 2 is my best round.

I agree with stellarexplorer on round 5. Between fuzzed out signs and being an overcast day when Google videoed, signs were almost impossible to read. Is there such a thing as an Unfuzzing App?

>30 stellarexplorer: When I was a kid, my mother used to use the word 'doozy' and I always liked the word and, of course, the auto; according to some etymologists the source of doozy and one of my favorite cars. I'd like to say I have two in the garage but, alas, there are two Subarus down there (not that there's anything wrong with Subarus... :) ).

34stellarexplorer
Giu 7, 2013, 1:54 pm

>33 bookblotter: No, my wife would never be without her Suburu wagon!

I'm still shaking my head over #5. I feel it beat me down by the sheer lateness of the hour and the frustrations you cite. But I can't help feeling I was on to something when I stopped, and would have been better off stopping and finishing at a later time. Oh well.

35wetlander
Giu 7, 2013, 3:33 pm

My PC hung up on round 4, about 4 times. Had to keep restarting from 1. Is there a way to save where you are at the end of a round, so that you can restart there?

Added to that, each time I restarted I kept meeting myself coming back. Must have lost it on the hairpins.
Round 5 was grim due to poor light, but eventually managed to find a readable sign.

Final score 26355

36bookblotter
Giu 7, 2013, 4:42 pm

>35 wetlander: As far as I know, the only way to save a geoguessr game in progress when, say, you've done the first two rounds and want to do something else like sleep, is to leave the computer on and the last geoguessr page where you were working open.

I use a MacBook and tried saving the page with Safari from a quicky geoguessr run that I did up to 4 rounds. When I retrieved it, it seemed to show my score, what round I was on and a picture, but no geoguessr map or way to "guess." I also tried the Firefox for Apple; same result.

Maybe some tech voodoo worker knows better than I (not hard to do). If anyone else knows anything different to save a full usable geoguessr page in mid-play, please post it on this topic.

37bookblotter
Giu 11, 2013, 8:51 pm

Stellarexplorer, apparently you're up to bat alphabetically for doing a new challenge. Let's put the challenge under the topic "Join In - Geoguessr Challenge" to avoid the potential date confusion here. The challenge to start sometime at your convenience Thursday, June 13th and to end at noon (US Eastern Time), Tuesday, June 18th.

I hope that we see you all and some newcomers in the new round..

38stellarexplorer
Giu 11, 2013, 9:53 pm

OK, I'll get on it. Thanks for keeping things organized.