4 ms·

Experimental WebGL interface in Google Maps

40 points by mark_h 15y ago

icegreentea 15y ago
Looks really cool. Needs some tweaking in areas with a lot of high rises (like Manhattan). The perspective + fading + faux shadows of all the high buildings can make making out the streets difficult in some places. But shiny.
xorglorb 15y ago
It works well, and I'm glad to see Google pushing towards HTML5 (and related standards) and away from Flash.
ck2 15y ago
OT but hey Google - bring back realestate to google maps! All these new features are nice but without new, local data it's not useful.
imrehg 15y ago
Don't work on my Linux machine (Arch Linux), but actually it fits their description, I have Mesa 7.11 driver and they say I would need "earlier than 7.9" [0]. Funny that on the same place they recommend to "[k]eep your graphics card driver and OS system up to date", which is exactly the problem - I'm "too" up to date... [0] http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=1220892 http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=12...
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- beej71 15y ago
  My Arch with 7.11 works (sort of--it fails to render the road label text correctly). Did you --enable-webgl and --ignore-gpu-blacklist ? It's a good improvement to Maps, I think.
robinduckett 15y ago
Works great on my system, Terrorists wet dream, tho.
PedroCandeias 15y ago
Doesn't work on my early 2011 macbook pro 13" running lion. Anyone running one of these can get it to work?
1880 15y ago
Very smooth in Windows XP with Chrome 14. If you don't see the option to enable it, make sure that you have English set as your language, or append hl=en to the URL. The best about this is that they aren't using images anymore in the map view, but vectors, just like in Android. Everything is faster, less data is transferred, and not everything is reloaded when you zoom in or out. This is what WebGL is about, real accelerated and smooth apps, not spinning metalic teapots :) Now if Chrome didn't get image corruption half of the times that I open a WebGL page...
ajtaylor 15y ago
Works great with Chrome 14 on Lion. The rotatable 45 degree satellite views are wicked cool.
zobzu 15y ago
Does not work on Linux with Chromium Slow with Firefox (also on Linux) I've sandy bridge intel graphics. sad state of the Linux webgl drivers :( Runs fine on Windows (Nvidia 560GTX) on both Firefox and Chrome, but both are also not perfectly smooth, compared to the classic view.
Game_Ender 15y ago
Works fine on my Ubuntu 10.04 Linux machine with Chrome 15.0.874.83 beta and Nvidia driver 195.36.24.
rufo 15y ago
MapGL doesn't seem to want to activate on my 2011 MacBook Air in Chrome beta (15) - it just says my computer doesn't meet system requirements. I don't see the option in Safari (with WebGL enabled) or Firefox, either.

40 points by mark_h 15y ago

Looks really cool. Needs some tweaking in areas with a lot of high rises (like Manhattan). The perspective + fading + faux shadows of all the high buildings can make making out the streets difficult in some places. But shiny.

xorglorb 15y ago

It works well, and I'm glad to see Google pushing towards HTML5 (and related standards) and away from Flash.

ck2 15y ago

OT but hey Google - bring back realestate to google maps! All these new features are nice but without new, local data it's not useful.

imrehg 15y ago

Don't work on my Linux machine (Arch Linux), but actually it fits their description, I have Mesa 7.11 driver and they say I would need "earlier than 7.9" [0]. Funny that on the same place they recommend to "[k]eep your graphics card driver and OS system up to date", which is exactly the problem - I'm "too" up to date... [0] http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=1220892 http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=12...

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
beej71 15y ago
My Arch with 7.11 works (sort of--it fails to render the road label text correctly). Did you --enable-webgl and --ignore-gpu-blacklist ? It's a good improvement to Maps, I think.

robinduckett 15y ago

Works great on my system, Terrorists wet dream, tho.

PedroCandeias 15y ago

Doesn't work on my early 2011 macbook pro 13" running lion. Anyone running one of these can get it to work?

1880 15y ago

Very smooth in Windows XP with Chrome 14. If you don't see the option to enable it, make sure that you have English set as your language, or append hl=en to the URL. The best about this is that they aren't using images anymore in the map view, but vectors, just like in Android. Everything is faster, less data is transferred, and not everything is reloaded when you zoom in or out. This is what WebGL is about, real accelerated and smooth apps, not spinning metalic teapots :) Now if Chrome didn't get image corruption half of the times that I open a WebGL page...

ajtaylor 15y ago

Works great with Chrome 14 on Lion. The rotatable 45 degree satellite views are wicked cool.

zobzu 15y ago

Does not work on Linux with Chromium Slow with Firefox (also on Linux) I've sandy bridge intel graphics. sad state of the Linux webgl drivers :( Runs fine on Windows (Nvidia 560GTX) on both Firefox and Chrome, but both are also not perfectly smooth, compared to the classic view.

Game_Ender 15y ago

Works fine on my Ubuntu 10.04 Linux machine with Chrome 15.0.874.83 beta and Nvidia driver 195.36.24.

rufo 15y ago

MapGL doesn't seem to want to activate on my 2011 MacBook Air in Chrome beta (15) - it just says my computer doesn't meet system requirements. I don't see the option in Safari (with WebGL enabled) or Firefox, either.