I wonder how long it'll take that we'll have a 'google shadow earth', a world based in real earth geography, but users creating content and mmorpg ecosystems on global scale? how would you like to be a somalian pirate? a shipping mogul (the elite fans might actually like that?), wage war on conflict areas with millions of other users? or be a peaceful traveller, a hunter in siberia etc? the battlegrounds could be restricted to real conflict areas, so there would areas for peaceful interaction as well. and when a conflict would appear in real world, it would be mirrored to the shadow earth as well, so there would be a point in keeping up with the real life developments of said area as well.
Originally posted by CrowleyI once designed a system like that in university, as course work. it was sort of funny when a couple of years later all the taxis got an almost identical system. but I had been thinking about a 'shadow earth' type of a project (with infinite static fractal terrain instead of earth geography, eliminating the need for map database) since mid 90s. I even did a sort of proof of concept program, but never got around to starting the real thing...
Now all we need is stable, high-speed internet access in our cars and we can make our own mash-up GPS devices...