A systems manager at Google Maps recent let slip details about a project that takes the global company back to its fan-boy/computer-geek roots. A new addition to the Google Maps family, which already includes Google Earth and soon Google Moon and Google Mars, is being developed under the working name Google Elsewhere.
Google Elsewhere will provide clear, close-up Google-Maps-style views of such mythical and/or fictional places as the Lost Continent of Atlantis, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia (pictured) and Tolkein’s Middle Earth.
“It’s a lot trickier than creating a real-world map,” one of the Atlantis team members explained. “Since there are no photos of Atlantis to work from, it will take super-detailed high-level CGI work and a lot of imagination to bring the lost continent to life.”
The members of the Narnia and Middle Earth teams face similar challenges, but perhaps the most difficult problem the Elsewhere teams face is finding an answer to the recurring question “How do I get there from here?”
“We get asked that one ten times a day,” a Narnia team member said, “for now the only answer is ‘when we figure it out, we’ll let you know.’”
Mon, May 12, 2008
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