GAME ON GOOGLE EARTH: PLANETINACTION’S SHIPS

PlanetInAction’s web-game Ships obviously skews heavily toward the Flight Simulator X/Densha De Go! niche of the games sphere, and is therefore light on what we might call ‘thrills’ beyond taking in the scenery, but its premise is too keen to ignore: it’s entirely built on top of Google Earth tech, letting you take the wheel of cruise ships (and zeppelins!) and travel along a true to life simulation of the globe.

I’ve noted a few games that use satellite imaging tech to bring in some semblance of realism and recognition to action games — The Last Guy and Square Enix’s 0 Day Attack on Earth, most notably — but this is a much more robust beast, and tech that hopefully will evolve over coming years.

Ships [PlanetInAction, via Google Earth blog]