Google have discarded this system and are implementing a new one. Using this in Unreal would require a real coder, or a plugin maker. There is however a more interesting company called Map Box → https://www.mapbox.com
Perhaps a Mapbox Unreal plugin could earn someone a MegaGrant?
For a little project, I will most likely use Unity, Swift UI or HTML/CSS/JS, as I am no coder. In the meanwhile, having a real time GPS location based maps, that you can stylise and change the graphics on, in Unreal, would be awesome!
Your hometown could “easily” become a cyberpunk town or a viking village in some RPG, or just an FPS shooter experience.
There is one big problem with google and free api/service.
They start something, do not make enough $$ (or find better way),
and they drop support or just close servers for service you use for your product.
And it is over.
Yes for fun you can implement and use google api, but i would not build me company/product around it.
You are more correct than you realize, because Google just did that recently. Now they are rolling out some new geo gaming platform and it’s quite unclear what that actually means.
That is why I am way more interested in MapBox. Their Unity SDK has a free tier for the first 50.000 monthly players. There are open source solutions out there, incase people are looking for entirely free static map. Mapbox uses at least one of these, the open street thing.
We have been working on a physically-based world for a while - see this earlier post: Physically Based Earth.
We are at the stage where we are looking for alpha testers to see if we can come up with an alternative to using data controlled by large corporations. The ambition is a 3D world that anyone can contribute to and use.
We can currently create any part of the world from a variety of source (Open Street Map, SRTM, GEBCO) and view and edit that in UE4 in the Editor and at runtime.
Here’s a couple of images of Dublin comparing OSM 3D buildings and our UE4 version.
Hi Derek, this looks interesting, curious what/how you’ve done this? I am trying to start a location based treasure hunt style mobile game but finding it impossible to find any info anywhere about how to use mobile gps data or geolocation data inside Unreal as part of a mobile experience. Apparently there is a node in Blueprint now but I can’t find any info on it anywhere? Anyt thoughts that might help please?
