I tried pressing the spacebar, and the little plane SHOOTS! Don't know if the guy is planning to make a dogfighting game, or something, but just thought it was worth noting.

Pretty cute :) I really wouldnt label it a sim but close enough I guess ;) Would be nice to have a mini-map or something so that you can see where you are in the city-general. I think the spacebar-shot is just for fun but some multiplayer dog-fighting over a city would be pretty funny.

You're welcome! :)

Found this game floating around del.icio.us a couple days ago. I assume a finalized version isn't far since there are already more cities today than there were yesterday!

As the google data should be worldwide, I tried to fly from amsterdam to den haag... but at some point (even before reaching the sea next to amsterdam the screen got just all white :(

Yes, admittedly, it was a bit of false advertising on my part to suggest taking a ride around the world.

But as the popularity of the project skyrockets, Mark has been adding additional cities, as brandy pointed out.

Multiplayer dogfighting with others currently playing is a fantastic idea, even to just imagine it! =D

Shouldn't flying north of San Diego get you the rest of California and eventually Oregon? Perhaps my geography's off... or I just don't know the area around where the sim starts you off.

he added mars now and also has the moon there

What a cool platform, it has so much potential! And it wouldn't be that hard to do the programming for either (I think?) Just a hittest and a MC to show the explosion and thats pretty much it! Have a high score system and maybe upgrades, and a sever to handle it all. I could easily see a major multiplayer phenom, maybe even a computer game!

But optimism is such a disapointing line of thought. Regardless, this was a lot of fun.

Ouch somehow this game gave me a headace.

Pretty neat, I guess. I think it would be better if any of those places were acctually near my house...heh. Pretty cool, though anyway.

It's just one of those games you can't stop playing! i agree with Lone in that there should be a minimap, its quite hard to go somewhere specific if your not actually sure where you are. Also, the rest of the games on that site are also really enjoyable. I did quite enjoy the interface puzzle, although im not sure what i have to do after i get the right numbers

Doesn't seem to work for me. Mars and Moon are alright, but the cities don't load up, just end up flying around a large white space. Unless of course I come across Santa's Workshop (napalming it, of course) then I suspect that it's not supposed to be like that.

Lot's of fun! Add the minimap, and perhaps some popup points of interest that could give you options to explore or read about (or google-search) the places, and this could be a great educationaly fun thing for kids, too. I'd probably pay for something like that.

*too bad I can't get the little plane to do a flip! :)

I live right near Washington, DC, and I could recognize most of the buildings in that area. I was experimenting, and noticed that when you shoot the ground, there is a small explosion- Obviously, he has coded some hit detection already.

As it turns out, actually, this is my first time posting on this site. I have really enjoyed most of the games here, though not the escape-the-room type games, as I don't particularly care for the genre. I am currently working on several small flash games, and I hope to get some on this site!

This is very nice.

Please add Toronto. I wanna fly and get to Mississauga and then be able to say, "I flew a plane over my house!"

Hah, very nice indeed!

I feel the game gets a bit boring after a while. Perhaps the game disigner could have teamed up with the people at google and made the software downloadable to google earth, so you could fly all the way across the Globe. I find it too simple and pointless but I'm sure younger kids would enjoy it.

Yippii! Helsinki, the capital city of Finland already on the list! I like this very very much. If I could just do some loops as well...

P.S. URL to Mark's portfolio is not working.

Cheers, Amor Lassie. Fixed. =)

How ironic--poor Mark had to put up Google ads to support hosting because of all the hits Goggles gets.

Hi guys,

Thanks for the feedback.. to answer a few questions:

Den Haag to Amsterdam: this cuts out because google dont have high res maps of the area inbetween the two thats why you get the white panes.

Dogfight: not going to be very easy to do or cheap. ElectroServer (the choice flash multiplayer games server) charges a monthly fee based on the number of users. Also unless the coordinates of all planes in the area are calculated on the server you'd get strange things happening (i.e. one persons .swf may register a bullet hitting a plane, where anothers might not). The game also hogs bandwidth loading the pics as it is.

Sim: its meant to be a simple sim, so people can explore, also the 3d graphics are bulky and limited so stuff like loops and stalls are out for the moment, although I have written code to make it act more like a real plane.

Finland: got requested today by someone from nokia!

Toronto: will try and add tomorrow.

Thanks,
Mark

This is by far the coolest use of the GoogleMaps API yet. Its a lot of fun to play, and it runs so smoothly.

This may not be really flashy, but it sure is creative.

Just can't wait for Toronto xD.

Also, I had no problems whatsoever running this. No lag at all and it ran smoothly.

Have you noticed if you tilt down while firing your shots hit you ground and make craters? That's fun. I can see a multiplayer thing coming out of this.

I live near Washington DC and was able to fly the plane to my house!!!!! and then crashed it into my friends house too lol. But i realized that Google images hasn't been updated since 2002-ish, because my community has been fully built now for about 2 years and the images still show the construction areas of the neighborhood from 4 years back.

um... like... DUDE!

Hi, look at this, another flight game using Google's mapping service.

Toronto - added.
Heraklion - added. (you know, the island of Crete? um.. its near Lybia.. owned by greece?)

Mark, if and when you are reading this, is it possible to make the shadow to stay somewhat same size or even smaller when the plane is higher? That way it would look more real. The shadow on the ground should look small when you are up in the sky.

Wolverhampton! England :D
Nicenesssss

Is anyone else having trouble with the maps not showing up?

Woah...I just thought of something. What if you combined this idea with Google Earth and made some crazy huge flight sim where you could fly around [i]the entire world[/i]?

Shame that would probably never happen...

^^ Isn't that basically what Goggles Flight Sim does?

And it's impossible to make a 'fly around the whole world' sim with Google Maps, because Google does not have high-res maps of every spot on Earth. Maybe pre-designated flight patterns. Hmmm.

BTW, thanks for adding Toronto!

Why don't you try putting in Google's headquarters at Mountain View, CA? Then you could send a picture of your plane dive-bombing their offices to Google, and a link to Goggles. ;)

There's a great option now to make a link that centres the flight over where you want (assuming that there is a high-res picture on google maps), so you can make it fly over your house, even if you don't live near one of the preset places.

This new 'link to your hometown' feature is certainly not an easy thing to do :-s

So folks, do read the instructions carefully. Also make sure that Goggles is not running in any other tab or window. I think that you even have to exit the front page at http://www.isoma.net/games/goggles.html while you are finding the location code for Goggles.

I'm not sure if this works but here's the Tampere airfield: http://www.isoma.net/games/goggles.html?loc=trtqrtqqqrsqr

Turn immediately to North-East after the location view starts, and you see my hometown. There's no best quality images for Tampere, so I had to take more height.

And if you want to fly around the globe, then just take some more height by dropping the letters from location code: http://www.isoma.net/games/goggles.html?loc=trtqrtqqq

add sault saint marie plzzzz:D

DX_Tris, do you mean this place: http://www.isoma.net/games/goggles.html?loc=tqsqttrtqtqqqtstrst?

Why Finland doesn't work?

Hey, I have some ideas. If you can't do online multiplayer, how about some enemy planes you can turn on and off. Also, if possible, you can make the game do scans of google maps every so often so it would always be up-to date(map-wise of course). Also if possible, maybe People can draw there own maps on paint and submit them so everyone can try them. But may I ask you to add Kansas, and maybe Sega and Nintendo of America

Is this game still up? It won't load. It just says "Preloading maps: 0%.

Hey great idea, but it looks like google have got the same idea.

Theyve built in a flight sim into there new 4.2 beta version. You just go into the application click the globe and press ctrl-alt-a (or ctrl-a-space) and it opens up a flight sim. Check http://earth.google.com/intl/en/userguide/v4/flightsim/index.html

Great idea though ! Well done

I like Mars!

takes forever to load for me!!!

pretty neat, but seems to have died?
A good game is to navigate from the start point to your house in as short a time as possible.
It's pretty hard, you need to choose a road route or spot your landmarks pretty promptly...

I hope this game gets back up and running- seems to have been left to die, maybe he got that dream job, clever chap!

for the rest of us, thanks mark for an interesting diversion at the office!

I couldn`t get it working either -----
wouldn`t go past the Preloading maps page

Google Earth now really does have a flight sim! And it has stalls and loops! But no shots. :'( It's ctrl-shift-a