1. Environmental
December 17, 2015

How we ended up exploring a church through the windscreen of an X-Wing

By City Monitor Staff

As you might have heard, there’s a new Star Wars film on. Apparently, in some quarters at least, it’s kind of a big deal.

So to celebrate the occasion, some unknown fan has coded a fun add-on to Google Maps, in which you can drive famed Star Wars vehicles around on Google Street View

The map is accessible here, and in practice is a little tricky to use: you can only navigate the world by scrolling up and down to zoom in and out, then dragging the little orange man to the relevant site. It also only works across the US and Europe.

On the plus side, though, you can choose between the Millennium Falcon, Darth Vader’s Tie Fighter and X-Wing…

… and pootle around to your heart’s content, imagining the terrified faces of passerby as you go. 

We enjoyed dropping an X-Wing on random bits of the UK and ending up in slightly inexplicable situations like this one:

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A church somewhere in the southeast, which didn’t know what hit it.

Then we attacked the Gherkin because it made a nice pattern on the windscreen: 

And here we are driving the Millenium Falcon through Times Square:


What a time to be alive.

All images: Star Wars Maps.

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