Friday 29 February 2008

googleDrive

A little project i've been working on is now live!

googleDrive is a little google maps mash up that allows you to drive a little car around on the maps.

http://www.phatfusion.net/googledrive

I'm also planning a doing another version called googleRacer that will allow you to race on predefined circuits against the clock, for example the paris ringroad. I'm also thinking of doing this one with the sat view images instead.

comments and suggestions welcome.

141 comments:

Anonymous said...

Could you tell me what is the speed of car? It could be calculated, right?

Anonymous said...

Hello !

Congratulations for all your works about mootools !

About goggleDrive, I can't enter location on the field with FF 2.0.0.12 and IE7 7.0.5730.11, but it works with Opera 9.25 !
I'm running XP pro SP2

Jazzaj

Anonymous said...

Google drive's great, the idea, how it works, just everything! pure fun :). The field is working btw on FF 2.0 @ Ubuntu.

Maybe you guys could create a little game from it? :)

Anonymous said...

doesn't work in FF2 - tried on two PCs...

Anonymous said...

Hey, awesome work, Google Drive is much fun! I've just had my girlfriend trying to improve her orientation skills finding her way home :0)

May want to consider the name though - there's already been talk of a Google Drive mass storage facility.

Anonymous said...

This is fun. It reminds me of an old Commodore 64 game in which you had find major cities. It gave you a name and you had to fly there with a helicopter. You then got points according to the time used. It would be easy to add to this "game" (and probably would educate a handful of people).

Anonymous said...

This isn't working for me. The car won't drive.
Yes, I used the arrow keys as it said.

Anonymous said...

Doesn't work. Are there any browser req.'s?
ff2-xpsp2 no (arrows don't work)
ie7-xpsp2 yes

BillyG said...

Amazing!! This could be such a good social networked game with road trips and scavenger hunts.

Unknown said...

the car seems to be going around 600 kph ... or around 370 mph

eydryan said...

this is fun :)

but please try to get hybrid maps (satelite and road overlay) they look boring like this.

also, try to tweak the speed, it's a bit hard to drive like this and it feels unrealistic. try to make the screen move backwards when the car is accelerating at a different rate than the car and then catch up as the speed increases. also, try to make the speed of the car a bit slower, but with the ability of going fast fast fast :) (for highways etc)

Anonymous said...

This is brilliant, huge kudos for your work!

Though I did find myself with an urge to drive home from the map's start point. There's 10 minutes I won't see again!

Will be keeping an eye out for any future releases, keep it up.

Anonymous said...

Need to make it so the car slides along the edge of the road so you don't get stuck so much.

cfreak said...

very cool. Works great for me FF2 on Ubuntu. Only problem I had was that it would take me somewhere random when I entered a location.

Anonymous said...

Such a great idea !

Congrats !

Anonymous said...

One of the best things I've found on the internet in a very long time. One problem though, if you drive a great distance, a new map screen loads, not a problem in itself, but when this happens, the road boundaries disappear. If this happens, and you happen to be outside of the roads when the boundaries come back, you can't move anymore. Perhaps in the next version, you could add a feature that would automatically return you to the road if you ever get off of it for some reason.

That said, incredible job!! I brilliant idea, with great execution!!!

Anonymous said...

An odometor would be stupendious. And a way to raise/lower the speed to calculate how far/how long it will take.

Anonymous said...

Here's a similar game:
http://www.thomasscott.net/realworldracer/

I prefer your version, it just needs satalite overlays!

Unknown said...

Remind anyone else of the first Grand Theft Auto (or the London: 1969 addon, for that matter?)

Now if only it had guns & bombs & that....

Oh, for some free hacking time...

Mrrix32 said...

This is Great!!!! :D

Just a few suggestions:
Hybrid View?
Zoom in a level or two

Anonymous said...

Love the experiment.

It would be awesome if you could set the speed of the car to pre-defined speeds (ie 80kph, 40kph, etc). This way you can calculate how long it will take to drive somewhere.

JP. Araya said...

Great, and i was able to drive along the golf yard. just drive over the train rails and then go there.

_V_ said...

great game!
would be nice if the car would not stuck but more slide if it crashes a wall
to set the different google layers would be another nice feature =)

Anonymous said...

Can't drive (FF 2.0.0.12)

Anonymous said...

brilliant. Can you add more cars, make it multi-player. Maybe police cars, guns, bombs?

Anonymous said...

didn't work with firefox

Anonymous said...

Great!

I was actually considering to do the same kind of game, more called like "grand theft Google".

Congratulations for great product.

Nitos said...

HEY COOL!!!!!

velocity boy said...

Love that you go faster on the motorways. Nice touch.

Matthias said...

haha, did you notice that you can also drive on railways? :-D bug or feature?

great job, love it!

Unknown said...

Really cool, though I always ended up in the middle of nowhere no matter what I searched for. I couldn't even manage to find major cities like LA or San Francisco. On the plus side, I now know how to get home from Missouri.

Anonymous said...

Needs Multiplayer!

And damage to your car for crashes :)

Anonymous said...

A note: you can leave the road in parks. I just spent two minutes doing donuts in Regents Park. With a great big grin on my face, too.

Anonymous said...

Way cool!! And yea, sat view would be awesome.

keyrat said...

Awesome.

-sat view
-more zoom
-multiplayer

Anonymous said...

Not good to post as a demonstration of your Javascript etc skills when it doesn't work so often.
Doesn't work on the version of IE I tried, Doesn't work on FireFox 3b4, Doesn't work on Opera 9.5a. Doesn't work on Windows Safari... might be more impressed if I could find an installed browser it did work on

Anonymous said...

Hey you anonymous... why don`t you leave your name, and some examples of your incredible skills?, i'd like to see them work in every browser... but of course... i am not a genius like you, so i haven't installed all those browser to test. it's easier to bark.

S.O.A.B.

Anonymous said...

There is a SERIOUS problem with this app and with Flash under Mozilla in general. In many cases the arrow keys have NO apparent effect. The car doesn't move.

We've seen this in countless Flash games -- I have to switch to IE to run them!

It's apparently related to a very long standing wmode bug described at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=312920

and elsewhere. Please try the various workarounds that are documented, and see if it improves access to your app! Thanks.

(not the same Anonymous as above) :)

Anonymous said...

Great Work Mann!!

I saw that the code is open source and licensed under MIT . Do you have the link to source code ?

Anonymous said...

Very nice! can you also make it embeedable? It would work just fine if we could choose the city and the initial location of the car.

congratulations for this idea!

Anonymous said...

feel like I'm playing GTA 2 in my neighbourhood. Very cool

Anonymous said...

I could drive in most of Europe, the major areas, but for example interior parts of Norway and places it get white areas, is it like that for many people? And the west-Coast of Canada where i currently live I couldn't drive at all. Tried to check Vancouver for example, but it won't work.

Anonymous said...

same for me... some bigger cities work, but outside of them there's only white...

Anonymous said...

Hi

You did a very nice job with this project im looking forward to the racing mode!!!

bye

Anonymous said...

Hey, love it! It'll be a fun way to give someone directions.

Its working on my Firefox (ver 2.0.0.13). Only problem is that it sometimes it doesn't load one of the map squares, but it seems to be working most of the time.

Anonymous said...

Have you thought about a way to use this in google streetview? You could have it buffer the next several images out of streetview, depending on where your car is facing on a street you turned into.
if not there is also the option of livemaps bird's eye view, that is cool.
your biggest issue is that you have to right click the flash & zoom, to have any decent control and not hit the "curbs". and zooming this way makes all the lines too fuzzy, and zooms in a little too much. obivously, simple satellite view would be amazing.

Harold said...

If only we could race...

ekis said...

it also creates the region of Granada in Spain

Anonymous said...

I've noticed one really big problem. Whenever I load an area code in missouri eg. St.louis or my home town etc. I end up 100 or so miles east. The same happens when I type in the name of the town. So the conversion of city to area code is working fine. But then it's just loading up the wrong map to start on.

Anonymous said...

Thats great!! It's a lot of fun. Could it be possible to show how far one has been driving?

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's awesome ! Really good work.

But i have one BUG REPORT for you.

When not driving through cities, there is a big bug. You can drive through forests and gras !
For example: Just enter "Biberach" and you will know what i mean. Would be nice if this could be corrected too.

So, good job. Keep on working.

Chris

Anonymous said...

you should make the car leave skid marks when you turn sharply, then you really could do dohnut spins in regents park

Anonymous said...

That's awesome!!

However like some other people have said, it would be nice to have a little game out of it and possibly multiplayer too. Another thing, it would be helpful to have place names marked so you actually knew where you were in some places =P.

Anonymous said...

Had to leave a comment this is pure brillant.

could do with loads of improvements for sure but as it is its a great idea and dam fun.


Heres to hopin we can all play GTA online in google maps in 10 years xD

@norwichtech said...

Excellent! Could you make it accept get, as well as post variables so that I link to it and it come it with a location directly?

Anonymous said...

owwwww, ok hand cramp, drove from starting place in london down to newquay...

great app!!! keep up the good work

Anonymous said...

Great work

Are you going to share the source code?

I have some ideas to improve this thing :)

Anonymous said...

You should make a MMO from it ;-).

Anonymous said...

Well I'm Running XP with FF2, and it works OK

Anonymous said...

I can get it to work fine in London, but when I type in "Los Angeles, CA" or "Los Angeles, USA", I get taken to a small town called Charleston, Mississippi which is abou 1,900 miles away. :(

Leva said...

Really cool!
You could add a "GTA" style effect of zooming out when you go faster - that gives it a more realistic feel. Good for driving on highways, etc.

9toes said...

Great job!!

Game play works fine for me in FF 2.0.13 on XP. I have to wonder if some of the complainers aren't forgetting to click on the flash object as directed.

The only hiccup I've experienced is that, when I enter Houston Texas, or my zip, it puts me in either Maine, Louisiana, or Mississippi.

Anonymous said...

Really Cool.

I tried Sunnyvale, CA but it puts me about 2 miles north of Marble Hill, MO.

OTOH, Madison, WI works perfectly.

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John Wesley-Barker said...

Impressive web app this. Thanks. It would be good to network this, so for example you could race a friend (both participants being able to see each other).

Anonymous said...

I have trouble getting maps for cities in the western United States. "Salt Lake City" gives me something I think is in Illinois, and San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Los Vegas give me bogus maps, whether or not I specify the state and/or country. Other locations (Paris, Tokyo, New York, Miami, etc.) work fine. I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.13 on Windows Vista.

wlievens said...

This is pretty cool. I had to resist the temptation to drive all the way to work - at work :-)

Anonymous said...

Works fine in FireFox for me. Good work!

This would be very cool if it used Google Street View.

ariah said...

Hey, whenever I try to get Austin, TX to come up, I land somewhere in Louisiana. This is not cool. There are alligators on the roads at night in Louisiana. I tried to get Austin by entering "Austin", "Austin, TX", and "78759" (zip code should land me in the Northwest part of town).

Unknown said...

As others have said, it doesn't seem to work in Western Canada and US. If you choose Seattle or Bellingham WA, you end up in Mississippi somewhere and Vancouver, BC puts me in eastern Ontario.
I've tried driving home but even at ~400 mph it takes a looooong time from Mississippi and I keep getting stuck somewhere.
Otherwise it's a very cool app.

Anonymous said...

I know many others have complained about his, but why can't I get to anywhere in western North America? I've tried several cities along the coast and some in the Rockies, but nothing happened. I'm sure many people would be very glad to see this unavailable area.

Anonymous said...

Awesome. Totally Awesome!!

Anonymous said...

Really great. I appreciate your work.

Anonymous said...

Got no idea why but I like this alot.

Walter Vos said...

To everybody commenting how it doesn't work, have you tried to click the map to activate it? Works for me, Vista, FF 2.0.0.14

Anonymous said...

Awesome fun! Great work, mate!

Now make an mmog out of it! ;)

Anonymous said...

Just some cool stuff:

Try entering "pellovägen, pello" as location, and you will find yourself close to the swedish-finnish border. As the car searches for a road to cling to, try steering over to the border and drive along it. The car will cling to the text, and you'll be able to drive on the border. Yay!

Anonymous said...

amazing!
keep up the good work!

mikelietz said...

How about instead of coming to a complete stop when parallel to a boundary, why not either:

*bounce off of it at the reflected angle if it's less than 30 degrees or so

*merely slow down and continue on the closest possible continuing path

I was ridin' the rails, but unable to get any real speed because the 'road' was so narrow.

Great start, though!

Unknown said...

I'd be curious about options to lay down a path, remember the path, note one-way streets as no-gos, etc. Hah... I love little bugs like, in Zurich I just crossed from a street to a cul-de-sac because the boundary was too small for the boundary finder: Kreuzstrasse, just west of Lake Zurich by 1-2 blocks.

Anonymous said...

its pretty cool. would be great to see other cars driving about on the maps too :o)

Anonymous said...

I'm way too entertained by this...

Possible bug: It let me drive off the road at one point, and then my car got stuck :(

Anonymous said...

this is really nice :D :D Some suggestions for a next version: an option to switch between 'map' and 'satellite images', different cars mabye, a speedo or something :) mabye even make a game of it, drive to different places, win cars, go faster with every new car.

good luck!

Anonymous said...

Make this into a multiplayer realtime rally race. Have the start point be some random part of the selected city, tell them where they need to get to. first one to get there wins.

Anonymous said...

Great work!

Anonymous said...

Worked great for me in a crusty old 400 mghz Pentium 2 pc with IE 6.0.2800.1106IS

I put in Portland (as in Portland, OR... west coast... so no problem there) and I clicked on the map before driving.

All other additions requested in other posts are what I would like to see also.

Great work!
:D

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, I'm running on Win 98 serivce pack 2 also.

*Stoney quietly sneaks out of museum*

;)

Anonymous said...

COOL!

PLS make it multi player! so that u can se everyone else driving, and se where they are... and stuff... also maybe chose kind of vechile?

like... buss/race car/truck/TANK(fire @ others? xD)

dude... pls... do it, u got a furtune right here

ilyasishak said...

hey there.
thanks for this great application. there's so much possibilities to it. you are genius!

Anonymous said...

Good Job guys! I would only suggest variable speeds; Maybe tap the up arrow a few times (changing gears) and invert the left and right while traveling in reverse. (for realism)

Anonymous said...

great job, it would be cool to make this multiplayer

Anonymous said...

Hilarious!

Anonymous said...

Absolutely wonderful, bravo!
I really enjoyed the ride ;D

Anonymous said...

Definitely downright amazing. I know how to get home from New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and even Kalamazoo! Very updated, has a new suburb right by my home added just a few short years ago. Very smooth, and you can drive in railways! Countless hours spent using this game, going everywhere I possibly could then seeing if I could get back home. Usually, I couldn't.

Anonymous said...

Hi great work
Can you please send me that script or sold it to me :D
please reply zvjezdana73@yahoo.com

Anonymous said...

pretty simple... if the index color is 15592162 (land) or 10073036 (water) the car will stop... thats the reason why you could drive on railways and some other things... no paths or something like this were used ... nice try :))

delvyn said...

GOOGLE MAPS PACMAN ???

Anonymous said...

Really funny game! But only for google maps, not for satelite! :-(

Anonymous said...

Is it necessary to give money to play googledrive?

Jack Frost said...

The Ultimate, Best-of-All-Time Time Waster. With vast potential for overlays, joystick control, hazards, simulated weather conditions, cross country racing, rallyes, uav control,and so, so many more fabulous diversions.

Thank you, thank you, thank you

Linus said...

This is way cool. For a worldwide smash hit, do this:
* zoom in and change the ratio so that a car takes less space on the map.
*Multiplayer.
*Wepons.
*Track score.
and you have a 2D GTA but in the "real" world.
Thanks for your work with the tools.
/Linus

Anonymous said...

Its really amazing.Nice Idea!!!

Anonymous said...

Amazing!
Allow us to accelerate and slow down, allow zoom and satelite & hybrud views, and you have the basics for the best GTA ever!

Unknown said...

Do you know that is possible to print the number of kilometer which car has accomplished ???

Craig Snedeker said...

Totally wicked awesome! YOU HAVE TO DO THIS FOR GOOGLE EARTH!!!! (the 3d version)

NeW said...

Hello,
I'd like to study your source code for academic purposes, if you not mind, how would i get your source code? and in case you can't lend me the source code could you inform me about links with directions on studing about these issues.
Thanks!
contact: newarney@gmail.com

Anonymous said...

It steers backwards when I'm reversing... :-)

regards,

cybernoid

Anonymous said...

I think it's totally fun. GoogleMaps has reached a new dimention :-)

Btw... People should stop nagging. This is not Playstation or X-box, just simple fun. So don't complain about lack of wild graphic. I think it's a great idea.

Unknown said...

Hi,

Firstly, a very sweet program!! Congratulations.
I was just wondering if your code could give out the GPS co-ordinates of the vehicle. I'm trying to simulate a scenario where in I'm driving the car and I'm getting the GPS co-ordinates.

Cheers
Ryan

Anonymous said...

This is the coolest thing ever!
Aspecially if you add the racing part.

Is there any way to enable linking add it on my own website, but edit the default city?

Please get back to me.

Anonymous said...

Hey, I wrote about it in my blog and connected it somehow to some game-design aspects. I think this would be interesting for you to read: http://digitaltools.node3000.com/blog/google_drive_steer_a_car_on_google_maps.php

Maybe one day you will make an API for it, for other people to distribute, enhance and use it? Keep me informed, if you turn that way!

Anonymous said...

Great work!
This could be a fun game.
Could you set start and finish coordinates & record travel times?

Anonymous said...

Brilliant. Such an original idea. I wonder if you could do something similar with the ground level view thing they have now...

Anonymous said...

i am making a similar game using google maps but i don't have the resources and i'm stuck at nowhere so it'll be great if u could tell me how the game can be made to work locally, and btw......googleDrive is an awesome game!!

Anonymous said...

Fun and very cool! Nice work.

Marelv83 said...

it is a Need For Speed City of maps?
perhaps with a little 3d modelling between a bit we could play, and perhaps to race the most beautiful car in the most beautiful cities in the world, as in the titles of games of the years 70-80... We hope. :-) However, beautiful...

Anonymous said...

This is awesome, you should get moving on that sat image version ;)

Anonymous said...

coool vry nice .....

Igor Partola said...

Samuel, I am very interested in how you are detecting the boundaries of the streets. Is there any way I could get the links that you used to get this working from you?

Thank you,
Igor
ipartola [at] gmail.com

Anonymous said...

It's been said already but:

Definitely needs multiplayer!!

Nothing special or feature creeepy, just so that the other cars near you appear on the map

Anonymous said...

Add navigator.

Anonymous said...

How about better collision detection?

Anonymous said...

Different cars.

Ilkka said...

Can I make commercial of this game to youtube.

Anonymous said...

mmm..great job, wish we can put them in blog:) hehehehe.
Great..it's awesome!




http://anggaran-budget-manipulation.blogspot.com/

http://e-serba-serbi.blogspot.com

ayalin_cow said...

I've found your application really cool!! :D
Congratulations!!
Keep it up :P

peter.panam said...

you can even drive on rails :D

cool thing

Anonymous said...

doesnt work anymore :/

Anonymous said...

Why it doesen't work?

Edinho said...

Back with this please.

Anonymous said...

MAKE IT WOOORK!!!>?3

Anonymous said...

Doesn't work for me :C

Anonymous said...

Doesn't work anymore... :(

How it is with googleRacer? It'd be cool too if we could drive in sattellite pictures

Anonymous said...

I would like to play this, but isnt workeen' :/

Anonymous said...

Frigging amazing! 2 things it needs: multiplayer and missions (ie. drive from address A to address B as fast as possible).

rafukish said...

hahaa! this project is great! fantastic idea :)

Sildenafil Citrate said...

I just saw you googleDrive you were working on and the idea is pretty cool and I hope you can perfect this project, congratulations by the way!

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