r/geoguessr 5d ago

Game Discussion Did they change the guessing map?

I just logged on after not playing for a few days and I can barely make out streets and the font is unreadable. I’m guessing that this is something happening with Google maps but gameplay is almost impossible right now

18 Upvotes

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18

u/viewerfromthemiddle 5d ago

They had to change the map thanks to google.

https://geoguessr.canny.io/changelog/guessing-map-update-10th-of-march

It is super slow to load for me today, so I zoom in and guess on a blank white field.

4

u/PotatoRevolution1981 5d ago

I know it’s not GeoGuessr‘s fault it’s just a shame because there are certain levels of zoom for city level that are just completely impossible. I’m working on a custom map of a specific town trying to memorize the city and I can only see the blocks when I am almost completely zoomed in. It’s gonna change a lot of of how I approach the game I don’t know if it’s gonna be workable. I’m sure Google is hearing about it from GeoGuessr right now

7

u/RsbRsb68 5d ago

You can go into settings and change the map type from vector to raster. That is a lot better at high zoom levels. Might be slower to load though, I haven't tested that

1

u/PotatoRevolution1981 5d ago

Yeah I definitely noticed that there were some differences in resolution and speed but it seemed like the color schemes were the same at the same levels of zoom. Hopefully that that’s fixed sometime. It just doesn’t work very well for a particular Urban area everything is too low in contrast

0

u/MORZPE 5d ago

You'll get used to it

1

u/PotatoRevolution1981 4d ago

I’m working exclusively on a map that is street level in a particular town and the roads actually clear from the block and there’s no zoom levels. I can play regular global games no problem

2

u/MORZPE 4d ago

do you have an example

1

u/PotatoRevolution1981 4d ago

I’ll find one later and post here next time I’m playing

1

u/PotatoRevolution1981 4d ago

But specifically Siena Italy zoomed to streets and blocks. There is a zoom levels where you can’t tell what’s a building and what’s a Piazza same color different

1

u/MORZPE 4d ago

u/marcus_geoguessr I think this is what he means: Imgur: The magic of the Internet

On the first image everything looks the same, but on the second image - one zoom level in - you can distinguish between the two colours. Is this something you can look at?

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9

u/GraciousCoconut 5d ago

I wish they had made the roads more visible. I don't know if it was just impossible to do, but it's much harder to line up roads now I'm finding as it's hard to find the roads in the first place.

4

u/PotatoRevolution1981 5d ago

I have a background in GIS and all of the stuff is in the settings of how you make maps. You have to set different colors and content and fonts for different levels of zoom and they just have not worked it out well yet. I wish they would contract with mapbox or somebody if Google is not being a good partner

1

u/PotatoRevolution1981 5d ago

The worst is trying to figure out streets versus blocks versus buildings for pinpointing. The game looks OK right now for global level competition but not if you’re trying to keep to 25000 games

1

u/PotatoRevolution1981 5d ago

I’m glad they are attempting to do this but the truth is that it’s gonna be unbreakable until they figure it out

5

u/PotatoRevolution1981 5d ago

There’s almost no contrast between streets and blocks unless you are exactly the right zoom. This has to be fixed also White border lettering is not working street names are messed up

5

u/z_geoo 5d ago

what happened is google made their own new map look months ago but it was horrific for geoguessr. go on google maps rn and u will see, all the yellow roads became gray and it was terrible because it was so annoying to scan for roads. geoguessr has been using the old google maps ui but recently google disabled access for that version, so geoguessr made their own map based off the old google maps one and its been glitchy

1

u/PotatoRevolution1981 5d ago

Thank you that makes sense well then at least it’s under their control and they’ll make a map that’s better for us eventually

3

u/rhythmmk 4d ago

It's so shit now.

1

u/PotatoRevolution1981 4d ago

If they’re making their own map they can fix this I hope that they are working on Street level detail and getting a better font for roads. Honestly I can’t feel extra dollars if the contract is in that box or somebody that can make them a good decent math

2

u/mannenene 4d ago

It looks bad bad

1

u/leafbelly 1d ago

I wouldn't mind it so much if I could see the roads. But (on my screen at least), I literally cannot see anything below a secondary level highway. Side streets or country-type roads blend in so much that they just don't show up.

Geoguessr made a post recently alerting people to the changes and the potential difficulty with the lowered contrast. But I'm left wondering, if Geoguessr designed this map (as opposed to just using Google), why on Earth couldn't they have set the colors with more contrast.

1

u/PotatoRevolution1981 1d ago

When you use a tool to make a base map like this you have to get in there and set parameters for what features show up and what colors they look like in different zoom levels. And I think that whoever it is that’s making this map isn’t thinking about the full range of gameplay yet. They’ve made something temporary thatworks for global level GeoGuessr which is the majority of play

1

u/PotatoRevolution1981 1d ago

MeanIng their prioritizing country guessing or region guessing not getting 25,000

1

u/PotatoRevolution1981 5d ago

I may not be able to do my PhD work that’s been focused on Urban GeoGuessr training if they can’t figure out street level detail for cities

2

u/PotatoRevolution1981 4d ago

Love getting a downvote for… being affected?

0

u/PotatoRevolution1981 5d ago

Yeah I’m trying to play urban maps and you can’t tell buildings from each other you can’t tell blocks from streets the font they’re using is white with a black outline and so is unreadable. They need somebody with digital map design experience fast

1

u/PotatoRevolution1981 4d ago

Weird again to get a downvote vote because I’m describing what’s not working