China's Google Maps (zoom out for best effect)

http://shanghai.edushi.com/

by pc • 17 years ago

132 40 17 years ago

shanghai.edushi.com

knowtheory• 17 years ago

Ah Shanghai, the only city i know of that has an elevated high way with roundabouts (check the lower left edge of the map).

That and the spiral onramp to the high tension bridge over the river.

reconbot• 17 years ago

I hope the roundabout has better lanes then that one does!

jaytee_clone• 17 years ago

Oh yeah, I remember those.

Traffic bottle neck, prone to accident. A horrible idea probably as a result of laziness.

jmatt• 17 years ago

Looks like SimCity.

I think the look adds something to the map. It's a bit easier to parse and understand than satellite images and adds more information than a standard overhead map.

For those of us who don't read Chinese - what's the story behind this map? [EDIT: Wording]

siong1987• 17 years ago

This is the real map of Shanghai in 3D. If you noticed the three buttons at the top right of the frame, the first one is for 3D display. Second one is for 2D display. Last one is for satellite pics.

These are so much info that I can parse from the map.

jaaron2• 17 years ago

Just to be clear, the 2D map and the satellite pics are from the actual Google Maps for China:

http://ditu.google.com/

reedlaw• 17 years ago

Top row's got the logo for the site, the city name (Shanghai), a link to change cities (they've most of the major ones in China), then buttons for McDonald's, hospitals, KFC's, banks, car dealerships, and higher education.

The second row says "E address", measure distances, show bookmarks, correct errors, maximize; then there's a drop down called "frequently used places", and print.

On the far right is a search widget with tabs labelled "Address search", bus search, yellow pages, and "E address".

This is a remarkably useful app that I use frequently when I visit major cities. You can easily plot a subway or bus route with it. There are also photos of many buildings and a few 360 degree panoramas. I used it for apartment hunting once and I was astounded by the resemblance of the isometric drawings to the actual buildings. They must have hired a huge team of designers to make all this pixel art.

maclifer• 17 years ago

Fascinating. I have never seen such dense development before. It looks beautiful and perfect, of course, until you start to jam everyone into it. :)

erlanger3• 17 years ago

Plane crash! Fire! Riot! Tornado! Earthquake! Flood!

rrival• 17 years ago

porntipsguzzardo?

erlanger3• 17 years ago

Why is this being voted down? That was the cheat.

latortuga• 17 years ago

Tools -> Disable Natural Disasters

access_denied2• 17 years ago

The cheat: hit F-U-N-D-S to get 10,000$ for free. But after you did this a few times too often, the game engine would activate all desasters after another. Is this just me, or does this remember me of someone at Wall Street?

rabidsnail• 17 years ago

Is it supposed to be alerting my user agent string? I smell XSS!

mr_justin• 17 years ago

Easy there, probably just a developer debug message checked into production by mistake.

jpwagner• 17 years ago

I like how McDonalds gets its own button

access_denied2• 17 years ago

There are so many interesting ways to monetize maps. Very intersting stuff.

octane• 17 years ago

The navigation system in my car has logos for the brand of gas station it has on the map. A good way to monetize the map as well as help people who have cards/accounts with particular gas companies.

papersmith• 17 years ago

That's part of their business model. They also put virtual billboards on prime "real estates".

mahmud• 17 years ago

I have lived in Shanghai, and boy do I want to live in this virtual Shanghai (the real one, only for sentimental reasons.)

For me, the best city in China remains Hangzhou, maybe Xiamen :-) the most chill, laid back places in the east of the country (Kunming, Guilin and Hainan Island are all gorgeous)

weegee2• 17 years ago

"pfft air one reporting heavy traffic pfft"

weegee2• 17 years ago

you guys didn't play the original Sim City did you. I used to leave my Mac Plus on all night to grow the population, I could run the game on a single 800k floppy, wow. Amazing how quickly the senior members of YC will vote someone down. Guess it's your way of keeping YC an elite site, and it boosts your morale knowing you're all better than us small-time users. Yawn, how boring is that?

RiderOfGiraffes• 17 years ago

You get voted down for not adding value deemed relevant.

bd• 17 years ago

Awesome. And there are plenty more cities linked from the frontpage (just hover over blue links in two rows):

http://edushi.com

For example:

http://beijing.edushi.com

http://hongkong.edushi.com

Some even have tiny animations - cars, balloons, zeppelins, helicopters, fireworks, flying houses:

http://guangzhou.edushi.com

http://xiamen.edushi.com

http://sz.edushi.com

http://dalian.edushi.com

http://www.3dyiwu.com

It seems like balloons and zeppelins are actually carrying banner ads (I don't speak Chinese).

------

Edit: I found the company that did it - Aladdin Information & Technology - with some English explanations:

"Aladdin has a dedicated staff of 400 focused on delivering 2D maps to creation of 3D models."

http://www.aladdincn.com/en/Cooperation.html

mmilo• 17 years ago

Yeah there are clickable ads within the map, a lot of the billboards seem to be clickable, which is really quite clever if they're selling that ad space.

hugothefrog• 17 years ago

I don't suppose anyone could point out the Olympic village on the Beijing map?

winanga• 17 years ago

Also for Hong Kong - http://hongkong.edushi.com/

jaaron2• 17 years ago

Makes it clear just how dense Hong Kong is, even compared to other Chinese cities.

Do you happen to live in Hong Kong?

kennyroo• 17 years ago

Such a beautiful product. Really shows how a web product can be practical and artistic. Very well done.

pbz• 17 years ago

Beautiful!

andrewljohnson• 17 years ago

This is maybe the second-best GMap I've ever seen, next to wunderground.com. And I follow these things closely since I run a GMap website too.

ridertech• 17 years ago

Awesome - I'm going to Shanghai in the fall and this is very fun to pan around. Now if only I could read Chinese.

est• 17 years ago

China's Google Street View: Beijing: http://bj.city8.com/ Chengdu: http://cd.city8.com/ etc.

seshagiric• 17 years ago

what no cars!

Keyframe• 17 years ago

so much work and so beautiful to look at!

China's Google Maps (zoom out for best effect)

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