Google Drive
March 18, 2008 6:05 PM   Subscribe

GoogleDrive. Drive a little car around Google Maps. Potentially useless. Enjoy.
posted by XQUZYPHYR (40 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- Brandon Blatcher



 
Damn, it really is hard to drive in the U.K.
posted by jkaczor at 6:09 PM on March 18, 2008


Stupid fun. Although driving through the traffic circles is pretty hard.
posted by maxpower at 6:09 PM on March 18, 2008


I can't get it to work.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 6:14 PM on March 18, 2008


I'm driving on the right hand side of the road and there's nothing they can do about it!
posted by Adam_S at 6:14 PM on March 18, 2008


Potentially useless?
posted by pombe at 6:19 PM on March 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


What would be really cool is if it worked with Street View - topdown map plus first-person photos would make for a great drive.
posted by OverlappingElvis at 6:20 PM on March 18, 2008


10 seconds

^ The combined length of time it took for this to first load and then bore.
posted by DU at 6:21 PM on March 18, 2008


The little car speeds up when you get on the M3 (or any highway for that matter).
posted by benightedly_heedful at 6:21 PM on March 18, 2008


Yay! I'm winning!
posted by sir_rubixalot at 6:25 PM on March 18, 2008


I just drove about twenty miles, from downtown Boston to my home in the 'burbs. It wasn't really fun, but it felt like something I had to do. It was closure for all those times I traced the route on a map as a kid.

Bravo for people who build useless stuff like this.
posted by bondcliff at 6:26 PM on March 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


cheat codes pls
posted by brain_drain at 6:32 PM on March 18, 2008 [3 favorites]


Cool! I'm 'froading in Central Park!
posted by ColdChef at 6:37 PM on March 18, 2008


Enter a city it can't find and the car turns into a boat.
posted by IronLizard at 6:43 PM on March 18, 2008


You can drive on railroad tracks with this. You can even drive on ferry paths, albeit with great difficulty.
posted by chrominance at 6:48 PM on March 18, 2008


AWEsomee
posted by localhuman at 6:48 PM on March 18, 2008


We can't be far off from a GTA1 clone using satellite view can we?
posted by saraswati at 6:49 PM on March 18, 2008


When GTA gets combined with Google Maps, I will convert back to PC again.
posted by crazy finger at 6:53 PM on March 18, 2008


When I first got Google Earth, I zoomed in as far as I could, tilted the horizon so that it approximated the perspective from the ground, or maybe from a mid-rise building, and surveyed my pixelated kingdom: Chicago, City of Big Shoulders! What great sweeping boulevards! What majestic, if weirdly squished skyscraping monuments to capitalism! What a broad and fathomless lake, mute and noble witness to the misdeeds and triumphs of the American heartland! And now, with this magical new technology, I could go anywhere in the world, in a flash, and experience the same vicarious thrill!

So I used my mouse and keyboard to drive to Indianapolis. It took me three hours; I think I may have stopped at stop signs and slowed down to let traffic merge. When I got there I was hungry and cranky and desperately needed to pee.

In retrospect, this may not have been a bad time to re-evaluate one or two things about my life.
posted by dyoneo at 7:00 PM on March 18, 2008 [10 favorites]


This is what the lady inside my GPS unit does.
posted by Frank Grimes at 7:06 PM on March 18, 2008 [10 favorites]


I drove off the M1 and got stuck in white nothingness somewhere between Elstree and Bushey Heath, with no other option than doing very tiny donuts.
posted by CKmtl at 7:35 PM on March 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


The lookup table the developer uses is fairly pathetic. Type in Houston and you get put into New Orleans. "Portland OR" or "Portland Oregon" lands you in Tripoli, Wisconsin (enjoy the drive!).
posted by maxwelton at 7:49 PM on March 18, 2008


I thought this post was about online data storage.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:56 PM on March 18, 2008


Hm. Seems like most anywhere west of the Mississippi land you in Wisconsin. Must be a joke I'm not understanding, though cheese is nice. As far as I can tell, Seattle lands you in the middle of the Pacific or Indian oceans, which means a dearth of teriyaki stands.

I kinda wonder how you mess this up; I thought the whole point of using Google's API is to let them do the heavy lifting of finding locations, displaying maps, etc. while you provide little cars or whatever nifty thing you're trying to do. Anyway. Fun if fulfilling for those of us in the wild west.
posted by maxwelton at 7:57 PM on March 18, 2008


Loaded Boston and got home no problem. Have the little car parked out front right now.
posted by Rafaelloello at 8:10 PM on March 18, 2008 [2 favorites]


I was hoping this was going to be announcing the launch of the long rumored Google web drive product.
posted by jeffmik at 8:31 PM on March 18, 2008


Sadly, this will be the closest I ever get to the London School of Economics.
posted by willie11 at 8:44 PM on March 18, 2008


how do i shot teh maps
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 8:45 PM on March 18, 2008


I drove around a little, and then drove my car right off the map into the uncharted white expanse of an unloaded map square.

Here be dragons.
posted by JDHarper at 9:10 PM on March 18, 2008 [4 favorites]


I drove off the M1 and got stuck in white nothingness somewhere between Elstree and Bushey Heath, with no other option than doing very tiny donuts.

So, it's quite realistic, is it?
posted by Dipsomaniac at 9:49 PM on March 18, 2008 [1 favorite]


Wow, so this is how it feels to drive drunk. No wonder so many people do it!
posted by Inversehelix at 11:30 PM on March 18, 2008


For all that I bitch about drivers in my town, it's me who's just ploughed through the pedestrianised area in the centre of it.
posted by vbfg at 1:15 AM on March 19, 2008


If only I could do that in real life.
posted by No Mutant Enemy at 3:33 AM on March 19, 2008


*waves to ColdChef*

Yeah, that's the first thing I thought to do, too! =D
posted by Eideteker at 7:16 AM on March 19, 2008


I drove over to NJ to visit my mother and ended up going off the map. Strangely, it let me keep going and the map resumed a few blocks past her house. It was then that I figured out it will let you drive on railroad tracks. Vroom!
posted by Eideteker at 7:51 AM on March 19, 2008


I love the idea, but I can't seem to get the search to work at all. I can't get it to show me any city that I'm familiar with.
posted by roll truck roll at 8:14 AM on March 19, 2008


Ironically I can only get it to work in Explorer.
posted by salishsea at 11:26 AM on March 19, 2008


@roll truck roll - agreed. Google Maps will quite happily accept just a zip code whereas this Google-Maps-in-a-clown-suit required very specific identification with full town name, state name spelled out in full, and the country name. And the sacrifice of some small animals.
posted by kcds at 1:34 PM on March 19, 2008


So, uh, I didn't see the "location" box until I came into the thread when I got bored with driving across the Channel, and because I wanted to see if if would still work I drove to France. Whee!

obviously there is something terribly wrong with my life that i spent time doing that
posted by The Bridge on the River Kai Ryssdal at 4:29 PM on March 19, 2008


Why did I play this again?
posted by TheSpot at 8:24 AM on March 20, 2008


Can I put "drove to Siberia" on my CV?
posted by proj08 at 3:29 PM on March 20, 2008


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