Winter is almost upon us and we all know what that means: a new hobbit film, this time The Desolation of Smaug, which launches in about two weeks.
To celebrate the release of the movie, and give Tolkien fans something to drool over, some folks at Google have decided to create an interactive version of Middle Earth.
Built as a Chrome Experiment, this website offers you a Google Maps view over some parts of Middle Earth. The map also includes some important locations from Bilbo’s journey including Rivendell and Dol Guldur (we know Bilbo wasn’t actually there so don’t send us letters).
Users can then dig deeper in every location to find out more, listen to Gandalf narrate some info and even play a few different minigames. There are still a few locked locations around The Lonely Mountain and we bet those will be opened once the movie hits theaters.
The whole website is a showcase for Chrome and works well with both touch and mouse input and it’s designed to be cross-platform, though it does take a while longer to load on smartphones.
We’re pretty sure many Tolkien fans would love for this project to expanded to include the whole of Middle Earth but until then you can still enjoy a bird’s eye view of Bilbo’s journey.
Source: Peter Jackson (FB)