Over the years we’ve seen quite a few games that use Google Earth as their platform including gems such as Ships, Google Earth War and the GE Flight Simulator. Now a new game is in development and it appears to have a ton of potential: Geoception.
Here’s a brief description of the game from the developer, Satyen Sarhad:
In a nutshell, you command and control a fleet of combat drones to provide local and regional security, eventually taking over the whole world. My aim is to make the game readily skinnable so arbitrary models from 3DWarehouse can be dropped into the game to replace the existing model assets. I have great hopes for this gaming platform, although (as you know), there are technical issues with achieving a decent frame rate in newer, out-of-process-plugin browsers. Nonetheless, I stuck with development and put together a limited game demo (that plays best in Firefox 3.6) that lets you fly UAVs around any city in the world, and shoot at various targets to earn XP:
They’ve produced a trailer for the game, and it looks quite impressive:
He’s working to produce a downloadable game client for both MacOS and Windows, and hopes to have it completed within a year. To help reach that goal, he’s created a kickstarter page which you can find here. The page explains his goals and plans with quite a bit of detail. It’s a very ambitious project, but could be a remarkable game.
You can view a bit more game play footage here, or learn more about the project at geoception.com.
[ Update: The Kickstarter funding was unsuccessful, and development has not yet been completed, in part because of the uncertain future of the Google Earth plugin. ]
About Mickey Mellen
Mickey has been using Google Earth since it was released in 2005, and has created a variety of geo-related sites including Google Earth Hacks. He runs a web design firm in Marietta, GA, where he lives with his wife and two kids.
whoa. the trailer music is cool.
Great game concept, have sponsored the project at KickStarter. Encourage all to do likewise!
“Remarkable” ? More like sad and sick – your very own 9/11 via a “combat drone”.
A gross misuse of Google Earth. Hope the project fails miserably.
Grow an imagination. This comes out in like 6 weeks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3tedlWs1XY
Wake up, the drones are here to stay.
Just saw in the news this week:
“Google Autonomous Cars Get Green Light In California
California becomes the third state to permit vehicles that drive themselves to operate on public roads.”
google <3 robots
Bout time someone did something in Gmaps. Looks cool!
!!!Lástima que nuestro dizque “presidente” convirtió a nuestro país en un real campo de batalla, tal y como se presenta en una parte del video (0:30-0:47!!!
¡¡¡What a shame that our so called “president” turns our country in a real battlefield, like it is showed in the video (0:30-0:47)!!!
Shame on him!!!!
it would be great to see http://au.gamespot.com/911-first-responders/ the 911 first responders games developed on google earth, using real world events, Great fire of london, with vehicles of the age etc.