Play the World: Google Earth now in Google Maps

With Google Earth and all its 3D, navigable geometry now incorporated directly into Google Maps on the web, it’s only a matter of time before somebody turns it into a game. I’d love to see that dream game we talked about a while ago where you race around your hometown in 3D, but the realization will probably be Virtual Foursquare. For those people who can’t even go outside to pretend to check in at an art museum to get a meaningless image of a badge, now there’s virtual badges! Ya know, for sitting at your computer, pretending to go to actual places in order to get pretend versions of fake badge icons that mean N O T H I N G ! Sadly, I would still do this.

For now, it provides me an even easier way to get distracted, jumping all over the planet and looking for 3D representations of places I’ve been or would just like to see. Naturally, bigger cities and attractions have more detailed geometry (see above compared to the actual version here) but it looks like Google’s been pulling Street View pictures of buildings to flesh out some rough 3D models. Check it out yourself if you don’t feel like doing anything else today and brush up on your navigation skills before badges, high scores, and zombies inevitably fall into Google Maps.