MapCrunch: The Airport Game

[Zombie Protestor]

So the rules are simple. You've woken up in an unknown location and need to find an airport to get home. To play:

1. Go to www.mapcrunch.com
2. Select your country on the right
3. Select the options "hide location" and "urban only".
4. Hit Go (or N) and get a random Google street view. This is the location in which you've awoken.
5. Post a screenshot of the airport once you find one.

[fanelian]

Interesting.

I seem to be in Brazil, judging for the street signs....

[EsBe]

Doesn't work for me for some reason. Could be the crappy work PC I'm on, but it gets stuck in a loop "Working..." leaving me stranded in what appears to be a run down, rural waterfront logging operation.

[jvcc]

I awoke next to a Kmart and an Olive Garden, so I appear to be in Anytown, US.

[MysticalDescent]

I'm fairly certain I'm in Jersey. The Channel Island sort of Jersey, not one of the American sorts. Lots of French names, but more importantly British style road signs and the place name 'St Hellier' on one of them. In fact, I've just noticed, the sign that I've spawned next to actually has a sign for the airport on it. Easy street.

[MysticalDescent]

Here you go. Victory is mine.

[PonderThis]

I kept a log as I went:

So I find myself in some random little neighborhood surrounded by apartment buildings. OK there's a traffic circle over there. Ah I see I'm someplace that drives on the left. That narrows things down a bit.

Zipping along ... now on a minor thoroughfare of some sort called "Livingstone Street". Just passed "Linmale Elementary". Continuing ...

Another traffic circle. And a sign that says "Glasgow Dumbarton A814". So I'm in Scotland not too far from Glasgow. Guess I'll follow the sign.

And I found a train station. Yeah that doesn't really do me any good as I'm stuck to the roadways, eh? This train station seems to be at the ass end of things in the wrong direction. GAH. Rattling around minor freaking alleys ... FINALLY! A four-lane road. Hey, it's the legendary A814! Maybe I can get somewhere from here.

Well poopcakes. I got distracted down a road that goes nowhere. Time to find the A814 again.

Whew! Found it. But ... which way do I go? people of dubious character couldn't put up a sign, could they?

Found a bus stop. Now if only they had the "infinite sharp zoom" button like they do on TV I could read the posted schedule. And the road is now a two-lane. So I'm gonna backtrack.

"Welcome to Glasgow" Now if I can only find a major freaking highway that might just have signs on it that point out things like, oh, I dunno, airports ...

Just passed the "Anchorage" bar and I seem to have found the back end of a seaport. Or at least I see the top of a boat so I assume it's a port of some kind. Can I just take that boat? No? OK, keep going.

Hey! An actual useful sign! "City centre Clyde Tunnel". Sounds promising.

The A814 has changed names from "Dumbarton Road" to "Victoria Park Dr S".

Passing over the A739.

"Edinburgh (M8)" and "City Centre" sign ... "City Centre 3". Woo!

A choice: "Partick B808 / Glasgow Harbour". Or continue to the City Centre. I wish I knew the name of the airport here. I guess I'll soldier on to the City Centre first.

The A814 is now "Pointhouse Rd."

"Finnieston / SECC (East & West) / The Tall Ship".

Now the A814 is the "Clydeside Expy" and has become an actual limited access highway. That's a good sign.

A HA! An offramp with the sign "M8 Glw Airpot" WOOOO! And poopcakes -- google just dropped me off on a side street. Rotate ... there's the M8. Click and I'm on the M8. Great! But which way?

Click -- underneath the M8. Click on top again. Click underneath. Just when I was about to get close enough to read a road sign. Click on top! Yes, it says "Glasgow Airport / Greenrock".

Heck there appears to be TWO airports. M77 to P'wick Airport and the M8 continues to Glasgow Airport. I guess I'll stay the course.

ARRR it keeps dumping me on cross streets underneath the highway!

Finally a mileage sign. Glasgow Airport 6. Oh that'll take a while.

Now it's 4. 3. Left exit 3/4m! Offramp!

Welcome to Glasgow Airport. Wooo! Following the road to the terminal and ... There. The DROP OFF lane! I believe this qualifies as DONE. Whew!

EDIT: Well I didn't do a screen grab like MD so you'll just have to trust me.

[PonderThis]

Looking at google maps after the fact I see I started in Clydebank and ran right along the river almost all the way into town. And I see that if they had managed to actually post some useful signs along the way I could have taken that tunnel across that river and pretty much ended up right at the airport and saved myself about half of that journey! Sigh.

[James]

Looks like I landed in Glasgow, too.

[Skimba]

This looks like it is going to take me, on and off, all day.

[fanelian]

I never got to the airport. But I wasn't in Brazil, I was in Portugal. I was on my way to Lisbon when I finally gave up.

[Skimba]

I chronicled mine in pictures.
I selected Asia, and to not show the location.
Waking up blindfolded sporting a ball-gag is not how I usually spend my Thursdays.

Apparently I started at the end of the Ma On Shan Park Trail around Ken Pang Ha, Hong Kong.



After clicking, clicking, clikcing....I found myself still quite surrounded by forest:


I found a sign, but could not read it:


Holy Crap! People!


More forrest and mountain-things:


I finally came to an intersection where I met a man, who, although funny, was unhelpful in directions, but I gave him the ball-gag anyway:

Civilization and a highway!!! Whoo!:



After hours of moving 10-15 feet at a time, I decided it was time to take a bus:


To Disneyland!


Then on foot-set out to airport....took a short bus trip, and walk/clicked my ass to the goal:


Total route:


I was very busy today, as you can tell.

[Zombie Protestor]

I should probably remind people that unless you want the challenge, you're supposed to pick your own country. And you can navigate around by clicking in the distance when it's a circle on the ground. That lets you jump several "scenes" at a time. Alternately, you can face a direction and use the up and down arrow keys to go toward and away from that direction. Left and right turn the camera a little faster than using the mouse.

I've tried this a few times. The first time, I figured out where the airport was but I could not stay on the highway. It kept making me curve on this off ramp to go the wrong way. The next time my browser closed. Going to try again today.

EDIT: All right, I'll do this journal style. I'm in some neighborhood where the railings of the bridges have fish decorations on them, so I'm guessing I'm somewhere coastal.

Found some sort of main road and after following it for a bit I find an airport shuttle with people. Whether it's coming from or going to the airport, I don't know, but I'm following it. There's mountains in the distance so my coastal assessment may be incorrect. I'm heading away from the mountains, as there wouldn't be an airport near those.

After a few intersections, it's obvious that this set was taken at a different time, as it is now stormy and the shuttle is gone. Oh, well, good lead while it lasted.

Aha! There's exits for I-90 running to Spokane and Seattle, so looks like I'm in Washington. Seattle sounds like a good destination to find an airport, so that's where I'm a-heading. Beautiful country, btw.

Gah. Apparently there was a nuclear strike when this was being recorded.


Well, things WERE going great, then I'm clicking ahead to jump forward and all of a sudden I'm in a tunnel on the wrong street. Bleh.

Back on track now. No sign of an airport exit.

I ended up giving up and looking it up. The airport for Seattle is halfway between it and Tacoma, way south of where I am now. I gotta agree with James in the post below, looking for an airport is not as fun as trying to just get out of the initial spawn point. Maybe we should just change the game to find clues on where you are?

[Judas Maccabeus]

I've tried this a few times. The first time, I figured out where the airport was but I could not stay on the highway. It kept making me curve on this off ramp to go the wrong way.

I had the same problem, I was in Houston and I kept being tossed onto the wrong road whenever I came to an overpass or underpass. It eventually became so frustrating that I had to give up, even though I had a clear run to the airport. Maybe I'll give it another shot tonight...

(Incidentally, the place where I started was the sort of subdivison I hate most. The best way to describe it was "a maze of twisty little passages, all alike." If I hadn't come across a map of the place I don't think I'd ever have gotten out. <_< )

Waking up blindfolded sporting a ball-gag is not how I usually spend my Thursdays.

*disappointment*

[James]

I found a sign for the airport incredibly quickly, but then I had to follow the M77 for what seemed like forever, then the A77 for a similarly tedious amount of time, and then I got to Preswick Airport.

I think the problem with searching for airports is that a lot of time they're actually out of town somewhat for practicality reasons, so a large portion of the journey is spent following long, mainly straight, mainly uninteresting roads. Perhaps it'd be a bit more fun to search for something like a police station or a florist or something.

After finding the airport, I decided to give it a go for Sweden, but I found the place it had dropped me was very much suburban rather than urban, and I decided to give up, because it probably would have taken me hours of aimlessly wandering residential streets and forest roads. After that I decided to try setting it to the whole world and seeing if I could guess the country I'd been dropped in. I've tried it a few times, and I haven't got one wrong yet, so I'm feeling quite pleased with myself. The first one was Romania, which was pretty tough, but I was clued in by the unusual diacritics on the letters in some signage, and a cart over-full with branches being pulled by an emaciated horse. Then I found a building with a bunch of Romanian flags outside, so that was a bit of a give-away. Then it put me in Antarctica, which was quite fun – I didn't know they had "street" view there. After that, it looked like it had put me back in Sweden, but the road names and other writing were all wrong. That was a pretty good clue.

I don't know. Maybe that's not a fun game. I kind of enjoyed it.

[Zombie Protestor]

Decided to use this as a chance to do a semi-virtual tour of places I've always thought would be nice to visit and started my journey in Germany. At this view here (http://www.mapcrunch.com/p/51.056963_13 ... 65_-9.36_0) I find this. WHAT DO YOU NOT WANT ME TO SEEEEEE?

[Judas Maccabeus]

Anyway, I decided to give it another spin and this time I was successful!

It dumped me into yet another nondescript subdivision, although this time with numbered roads that I could navigate by. The fact that I was on 288th Street was a bad sign, though.

Getting out to a more major road wasn't too hard; I also found out that the street numbers got lower to the north - that would be the way to go, I think! There was also some sort of big body of water to the west, might as well head in that direction for a clearer view...

After a while going north, I got to... Des Moines? This really doesn't look like Iowa, it's forested and kind of hilly.

My policy of relentlessly going northward and sticking to decent-sized roads finally paid off, when I saw that wonderful word on a sign: Airport! Time to take that road and stick to it.

There was a sign that mentions "Port of Seattle". Aside from meaning I was probably close to the airport, I now know where I really am.

Finally, after a while on the road, I came to an intersection and... huh. That fenced-off area almost looks like... and that tunnel I went under on the road I turned off on next was under a runway... Aha! Now to find the terminal.

Ummmm...

Where is it? Ugh...

OKAY FINALLY FOUND IT.




And here's a map of my route, including my wandering in the area of the airport itself:



If I'd only stayed on the first main road I came across, I'd have looked like a genius (or a cheat).

[Zombie Protestor]

That is hilarious that J-Mac and I were heading toward the same airport.

[PonderThis]

Decided to use this as a chance to do a semi-virtual tour of places I've always thought would be nice to visit and started my journey in Germany. At this view here (http://www.mapcrunch.com/p/51.056963_13 ... 65_-9.36_0) I find this. WHAT DO YOU NOT WANT ME TO SEEEEEE?

The Germans are a superstitious lot. Many of them believe that if a photograph of their house is ever posted on the internet it will steal their soul.

[Judas Maccabeus]

I found a sign for the airport incredibly quickly, but then I had to follow the M77 for what seemed like forever, then the A77 for a similarly tedious amount of time, and then I got to Preswick Airport.

I think the problem with searching for airports is that a lot of time they're actually out of town somewhat for practicality reasons, so a large portion of the journey is spent following long, mainly straight, mainly uninteresting roads. Perhaps it'd be a bit more fun to search for something like a police station or a florist or something.

Yeah, it's kind of inconsistent with how fun it could be. The trip in Seattle I could treat as a sort of logic puzzle, as I had to work out a good portion of the way on my own, and even after finding the sign for the airport there were a few spots where the route was a little ambiguous, so I still had to think out a few intersections. I just did another one (in Germany), though, where I found out I was in Dresden pretty much right away and like a second after found a clearly-marked path to the airport. I was seriously considering taking a detour when I saw the road to Prague just to do something different, but that would have taken way too long.

[Zombie Protestor]

There's dozens of these on the same street. What is the deal?



EDIT: Wait, Judas ended up in Dresden, Germany next? That...that's exactly where I am now.

EDIT EDIT: Aha! Apparently Ponder was close to the mark: Many people in Germany requested that their houses be blurred. http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/1 ... -view.html

[Judas Maccabeus]

Misadventures in France! I figured out fairly quickly I was near Chambery (I saw the flag of Savoy and some mountains that looked Alpish, and that's the only place there I know of), but the highway I was on ran out of images after a bit - turned out it was the right way, though, as that would have led fairly quickly to the main city airport (about 15 or so km away from my starting place as the car drives). What was funny though, was this:



This was my view starting out. Aside from the implication that I ended up where I did by getting in a car wreck (shouldn't have let Ponder drive), the fun part is that I found out there's an airport RIGHT THERE BEHIND THE AUTO PLACE. It's seriously only about 200 metres away in that very direction. Only a small place with one runway, but still.

[PonderThis]

EDIT EDIT: Aha! Apparently Ponder was close to the mark: Many people in Germany requested that their houses be blurred. http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/1 ... -view.html

You thought I was joking, didn't you? Yeah, the Germans got really rickin'-frackin' weird on the whole street view issue. I figure my explanation is as rational as any.

[EvilJekyll]

I am somewhere in VA. I'm heading towards Richmond, I think. They have an airport there right?

[EvilJekyll]

Got it finally: http://www.mapcrunch.com/p/37.498848_-7 ... 32_-0.08_0

http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=Crest ... 3814021840