Every Trick a Pro GeoGuessr Player Uses to Win (ft. RAINBOLT) | WIRED
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- Опубліковано 8 чер 2024
- If you haven't heard of it, GeoGuessr is basically competitive Google Maps. Participants try to guess where they are on the planet with just a single, random Google Street View photo. Pro GeoGuessr player, Trevor Rainbolt, is one of the best in the world, and can guess locations in approximately .1 seconds. Trevor explains how he does what he does, and how you can learn as well.
Check out more from RAINBOLT here:
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Director: Katherine Wzorek
Editor: Parker Dixon
Talent: Trevor Rainbolt
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Samantha Vélez
Production Manager: Eric Martinez
Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila
Post Production Supervisor: Alexa Deutsch
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Assistant Editor: Billy Ward
Junior Editor: Paul Tael
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nice
lets go !!!!!
nice 👍🏾
we’ll take that
Noice
Nice
Trevor’s gotta get paid by GeoGuessr marketing, because he’s brought so many eyeballs on the game
I actually started geoguessr because of his videos. It's such a great feel if you see something and know "oh yes that's a Spanish road"
@@knallkasten5159 yes! yesterday i was able to reocgnise baltic trees and i was so happy
He is the goat
@@RubyPiec ngl if I'm in Europe and I'm in a forest I go %90 Baltic if it's Birch trees I go Scandinavia mostly Finland because I'm kinda noob
GeoGuesser is now a crashgrab game because of its popularity
Dude has high elf energy
Magnificent
I thought this was a really dumb comment, but then the more I thought about it, the more it makes sense lol
more Keebler than Tolkien to be honest.
@@SpicyTrifongo we’re talking cyrodiil
@@Crybaby-Media Cyyrodiil is the continenet, Tamriel is what you're thinking.
But anyway, he looks like a Bosmer (Tree Elves), not an Altmer.
Dude will never get lost.
Right
Just the amount of info he has memorised to guess the countries is insane, let alone being able to do it that fast
It becomes intuitive.
@@lavacaqueri5454 depends. When I play geoguesser I say aloud the reasons of my choice. If you actually have conscious reasoning as to why you choose a certain location it is not intuitive.
@@lavacaqueri5454 Yeah. It looks impressive when you don't play the game (or don't play it a lot). But honestly it's really not that hard.
Like you say it becomes intuitive. And he used the word I always use : when you pop into a country you have a *vibe*
One of the things humans are best at is pattern recognition. I would really recommend watching Veritassiums video on what makes people have mastery of their craft, and geoguesser falls right into all the categories outlined.
hes the definition of practice makes perfect
the recognition he’s getting finally is so good
IKRRR
I absolutely love the how he absolutely owns every single game in his insta
" finally " bruh he wasnt a channel earlier this year
@@krns1695 yes but he’s been doing so much for the community and hosting tourneys and all that
@@krns1695 He's done so much in the short time he's had a channel.
thanks to Ludwig for contributing to make him noticeable
I used to think this guy's TikToks were just obviously fake jokes. The fact that this is ALL real and he still has more to learn is mind-blowing. And he only played this for about a year to get this good???
Do you still think the 0.1 second guesses are real though. I find it hard to believe
@@jassingh7086nope, they're not fake
@@jassingh7086they are definitely real lol
@@jassingh7086yeah lol he used to play hundreds of these “.1 second” games a day so he will get luck streaks sometimes. He did burn himself out with those challenges so he doesn’t even play them at all anymore, he just tries to find where people’s old family photos are taken
.1 seconds is a setting in geogussr. It's definitely possible. It's not easy, definitely requires practice but it's possible.@@jassingh7086
Geography teacher - 'Can anyone tell me where...'
Young Rainbolt - '35 via Pizzera, Veneto'
GeoWizard first brought the hardcores, and Rainbolt continued the game's exposure to the bigger, more casual audience 💯
Same. Big GeoWizard fan as well. He used to hold some world records, but this guy is next level
Nah tbh streamers brought the casual audience, although Rainbolt is really the first to popularise the competitive side of it
I prefer GeoWizard because it feels like he's doing legitimate geography guesses, not just metaguessing based on camera quality and blurrings etc
@@AdmiralMason GeoWizard actually uses the meta. Senegal rifts, Ghana tape, etc.
@@throwaway756 to a lesser extent than others tho
can you IMAGINE, if this guy was raised as a chess player or something?? His ability to learn and memorize patterns is definitely a talent
pattern recognition is definitely a trait but the calculating candidate lines is a totally different skill set and really what separates the best chess players. This guy could totally be a tetris grand master, though.
It's a lot easier than you think compared to chess
@@harisahmad7871 yea i don't think geoguesser can compete with chess, i heard that the total outcome of a chess is like number of galaxies/stars in the universe while the pictures of earth on the other hand has limited outcome. You know, just earth.
@@laudarren4773 But a chess grandmaster does not memorize millions of possibilities, only a couple of thousands of the most commonly used possibilities.
@@laudarren4773 You reach that in 10 moves. The total number of all outcomes in a 40 move chess game is twice asarge as the number of atoms in the universe. Ofc that has a lot of rubbish moves tho.
I have a weird tip that he didn’t mention.
This just helps me with Australia, but I like to look at the different types of kerb/curb and barrier walls and it gives me a good idea immediately which state I’m in. Because VIC and NSW use completely different kerbs, and the rest of the states are slightly different too
Another very noticeable difference between VIC and NSW are their "No Stopping" street signs. In NSW, they are red with capital letters, whereas in VIC they are white with a simple logo ("S" with a slash through it) instead of lettering. There are NO exceptions to this. Once you start seeing this, it'll be very easy to tell the two states apart
Other than that, you can just go with number plates if those signs aren't always around. NSW is the only state with yellow plates
only kerb i use is jebediah.
@@kosmique I use bill and Bob, jeb is gone
Straight out of a movie this guy is. He's definitely the smart guy that figures things out and gets the plot moving
Master Yoda???
The crossover I've NEVER expected to see, but I'm happy I did.
Same
What crossover? This channel just interviewing this guy isn't it?
@@farrel_ra idk but shocking to see him on wired
@@stepstar865 ohh I see thx
What crossover? This is just an interview
It's insane how much attention this game is getting and Rainbolt is one of the main people that have massively broadened the audience.
I think GeoWizard started it
@@tommasopalma766 Nobody really started it. We all began playing the guessing game pretty much the day Google Earth came out. When you guessed wrong, you had to take a shot.
@@XanderEwald He help put Geoguesser on the map because UA-cam "chose" to recommend it to everyone. To a lot of people GeoWizard is a pioneer. //EDIT: including me :D
Yea, I agree your opinion
but without your ableist expression („insane“) because that’s so cynical.
Did you know that you can hurt other people if you use an ableist language?
@@iche9373 Did you know that tone policing increases depression? Maybe you should check yourself first. Also censorship is more harmful than discrimination - for proof compare USSR to USA over the same time periods.
This felt way longer than 7 minutes. He talks fast and gives so much information
I know bro didnt just say "Theres an eastern road in north Macedonia with dead flies on the camera" 💀💀💀
Google should adopt or have partnership with GeoGuessr, and have the International GeoGuessr competition held every year in the middle of their Google I/O developer conference.
That would be a cool sight to see to conference goers there, and would be a cool opportunity to introduce the world in this competitive geography guessing sport, and to the Google Maps Community itself.
+
no, Geo should pay Google for using their services
@@L2002 They do, that's why they have premium memberships
@@L2002 The API ain't free
Agreed
I used to play this game years ago and thought I was pretty clever for figuring out road direction, signage, vegetation, and other "vibes", but this community takes it to a whole other level. I mean, soil analysis? That's hardcore.
He can guess a country just by the grass 🙂
And that's a lie
@@baslatz_ nah
@@baslatz_ it's probably just the vibe of a player
@@baslatz_ except it isn’t. There’s videos online of him doing exactly that.
This guy is the closest I’ve seen to a real life Sherlock Holmes. Never seen his content, but I can totally picture BBC animating his deductions Sherlock-style
I feel like the reason more people don't play this is because it's so hard to get into
It’s not that hard to get into. The vast majority of people playing don’t analyse poles and bollards etc. Often the language/road direction is enough to have a pretty good guess.
I think you have to be on the spectrum to enjoy this. It looks very boring and its a pointless skill/knowledge to develop.
@@davids8127ome people find it fun, I do (you don’t have to take it super seriously, I just mess around most of the time)
@@davids8127 "I dont enjoy this so everyone that does must be autistic."
@@davids8127 nah you're obviously just boring
The Soil, tele poles and number plate length are pretty advanced tactics.
I guess alright with language, climate, road markings, building architecture and car age or quality.
Trees are my best guess lmao. I can get a great guess on the climate zone, now its just a matter of the rest
Same, sometimes looking at people can help as well. Color of skin can help identify region sometimes, or what they are wearing
Knowing Baltic poles is so useful. Without them your are completely clueless unless you find language.
@@gubblfisch350 jokes on you, im clueless even after i find the language
@@jaicus_ It's not that hard. If it has weird bars over many vowels, it's latvian, if if looks like Finnish (many double vowels, kk, many Ys), it's Estonian, otherwise it's Lithuanian.
What a guy. Great at the game, humble, willing to teach others, gives great and well considered answers to the questions. The tournaments he hosts are becoming the highlights of my week. Rainbolt is the king
This video has the energy of a magician revealing secrets to their tricks.
I love Rainbolt. He got me interested in the game, and his tournaments that he hosts and streams are super fun to watch.
I first discovered Geoguessr thanks to GeoWizard but Rainbolt has popularised it to the casual viewers. GeoWizard would take time to get as close to the exact location as he can while Rainbolt's approach is to guess as quickly and as accurately as possible. Both are impressive though.
The game was already very popular before GeoWizard and especially Rainbolt (who feels like a very recent phenomenon but maybe i discovered him late) really made any videos of it, at least in my region everyone knew about it right after launch and we played it all the time. I liked it better before all the meta stuff became a thing though, just plain old looking at the landscape and culture is what the game was about
@@minephlip yeah, using bollards to know stuff is borderline ok but i hate the "well the google maps car that drove through here had a blur on the right mirror so I know it's x country".. that kinda stuff just isn't in the spirit of the game
@@EB-bl6cc It's still pretty nice to see what people can do at the highest possible level of play, I think it's cool to see
@@EB-bl6cc dont hate the player hate the game
@@EB-bl6cc also tha stuff is everywhere in the game guessing based off camera quality and the color of the car is super helpful also of a country uses low cam on their car for privacy reasons (Switzerland and japan)
The amount of skills he has is Impressive
To think there’s even better players than him too
U should look at Stique. He is known throughout the Geoguessr community as the best or close to being the best
and he's not even the best
@@Istori69 stique is some loser who cheated for $25
Put in a mere 13 months of time looking at Google Maps and you too can possess such skill.
Until this video, I honestly thought it was a meme and he knew the location before the picture was given. This is incredibly impressive
Cool coverage and great tips. I struggle a lot with the same countries - Russia is absolutely massive, and there are some Geoguessr favorites that are really hard: rural Spain, rural parts of North America, a lot of cities in Japan look similar.
I always struggle with Asia, i can instantly recognise every country based on what their language looks like, but i can’t ever guess the correct city in japan and china
@@neek01 Dont guess China, google doesnt have coverage there.
@@zesk6718 there is some trekker in China, also nearby there is Taiwan, Hong Kong, and I think Macau. But you’re right that the chance of Chinese coverage is extremely low. Also India was purely Delhi area until very recently, and still is largely that same area.
@@NightOfCrystals so you mean there is no official China coverage done by Google but there is some people in China upload street view to Google Map so Geoguesser will encounter those kind of puzzles?
So proud of this man
Hi again stique! :)
@@diamondminerz8337 hi diamond minerz!
Hi stique
@@restitutororbisgg yo
Stique, the legend himself!
Man it was hard watching this. I totally forgot about this game. My dad and me were playing it and he loved it for the short time we were playing it. He always dreamed of traveling the world. Unfortunately he recently passed. Miss you dad
Sorry to hear that. Keep your head up and travel in your dad's honor :)
Very sorry about that :(
Oh, so sorry for your loss!
Sorry for your loss. I bet your Dad would want you to still be enjoying this game, even with someone else. Take care
@@ElPestino based
while using these clues can make it easy to narrow down the location, its an entire skill in itself to memorize and correlate them all correctly.
Kinda proud that Indonesia becomes a challenge for Rainbolt. It's just because we don't really have centralized regulation about road signage or pole material lol.
This collab is really deserved, man has put more time in geoguessr and knowing small details to pin point countries, than people use for their degree
It's so nice to see the Geoguessr community gain more traction through rainbolt, with this outside attention, everyone can learn more about the world!
GeoWizard has done so much for the game too. Its nice to see it finally getting attention
He could seriously help people with his knowledge
You could write a thesis about the difference between the places you observe and I think its very useful like in terms of tourism, demographic studies, architecture, survival etc.
Jesus just hearing how confident he is about Alberta having black white black. I live in Alberta and never thought so much of those things until now. And I'm probably gonna think back to this every time I see them now lol it's so true
I feel you, mate. I live in Victoria, Australia, and I've never even thought about us having concrete power poles before, and the rest of the country not having it.
to me, what was the most impressive feat was him recognizing the difference between the angel of side mirrors of North vs South Kyrgyzstan drivers and deducing that it was due to height difference of the drivers
One thing thats really useful to know is that Google Maps doesnt cover every country on earth, some countries are way more common than others
This was really interesting stuff! What baffles me the most isn't the vast knowledge but how quickly he is able to process an image and its information to formulate a guess. His brain is built different.
I don't think his brain is "built different" at all. He says right at the beginning of the video "I've dedicated every ounce of my spare time for the last 13 months to studying Google Maps". Pattern recognition is what the human brain in general excels at. No need to explain his skill with born talent when dogged dedication already suffices.
@@bennemann
The fact that he's able to even do that is exceptional. I mean it's easy for us to say that but this guy actually did it.
it's really not that hard when you see a very similar landscape, vegetation, road quality and architecture a few thousan times
Autism. Not a joke either. His brain is probably built a little different.
I went pretty deep into geoguessr during 2020 and i got frighteningly good at "vibe guesses" after a while and would win the battle royale games a lot
but this is another level, this is some savant sh*t.
Pro players are scary.
i can't even guess my own country in geoguessr😭
*American
bcs whats this guy saying is lie
@@markglennyt9230 I'm sorry that it made you feel that insecure
@@markglennyt9230 and because you’re a hater
So nice to see that Trevor has made it this far in such a short amount of time. Seems like a really likeable guy and rlly good at GeoGuessr obviously
This is absolutely insane! This makes me want to start getting into geoguessr.
I haven't really played but love watching so this was interesting. Geographic intelligence is very different now than even when he was in school. We don't really learn where nations are anymore but it's all about the actual geography of the earth, how things like landslides happen, tectonic plates etc so its great that there is a game out there to help teach folk more about the world than what taught
After this, he could use these skills for a job finding people who go missing/taken. Especially when they get pictures for ransom. He'll be able to tell which city they're in anywhere. Seriously awesome talent though.
i imagine most ransom pictures aren't taken outside next to a road but that would be nice
Im sorry but do you realize how stupid your idea sounds..?
@@cabbage-soup we'll see who's laughing when the ransom photo has a google street car with black tape on one of the bars
Just recently there's been guys bombed in the war in Ukraine because they had selfies inside barracks and people were able to find the exact location based on the building size and limited details.
This is genuine security intel skill
This is a good dream, but there's a lot of countries and areas that aren't covered in Google Maps.
Sure didn't expect to see a video on him on wired...
Haha, same - I thought I just had a new rainbolt video in my subscription feed, only then saw it was WIRED! 😅
this guy can be an internet mystery investegator..place plays a huge role in solving some mysteries
the scanning and attention to detail is insane.
This guy is literally a human GPS
I've been following Rainbolt for quite some time, and he is truly a legend! Bro is so good and practices so much like noone else.
I think its kinda fun playing this in a. more relaxed manner where you get to wander around a bit and see interesting things while you try and figure it out rather than just memorize all these specifics.
Congrats on the coverage dude. Well deserved
So happy to see Rainbolt on WIRED! I love his content
2:15 Indonesia uses concrete for the electrical pole. The steel ones are for telephone/internet cable.
But never heard of him, but he's great and seems like a nice dude too. I hope this gets more people into the game, it's so fun and you learn so much while seeing so many places, and there's infinite maps and many challenges and modes and you can create them too (if you have a pro account but it's not expensive) so just do whichever you want!(: start with your town!
Ireland is my favourite country to pinpoint in. Every junction has a roadsign that gives you the road number and the two towns youre between. It's so easy, it's great
I love when someone takes a talent and elevates it to absurd heights
It’s amazing how fast Trevor has grown I’ve followed him for a long time on TikTok, it’s insane and he deserves it all, huge amounts of positive energy and knowledge
I've never seen someone look more like a geoguessr professional than this guy.
RAINBOLT blows my mind with his insane geoguesser, so props to him and WIRED with those tips.
amazing to see this content on this channel, ive been watching these videos a lot lately
Holy Moly. Talk about the ultimate capability. Especially for a cop, or spy. His attention to detail, is astounding.
If there's a teleporter/jumper out there, this guy is definitely on their favorite contact list
genuinely in love with this man
I am so happy for him that he finally gets all the recognition and attention! he is just so likeable
This is incredible - it's so interesting to see what strategies people come up with to optimize the heck out of game strategies, and in this case I would never have guessed that studying telephone poles was the way to go. Truly fascinating
I remember watching geowizard's streams about a year ago thinking how cool it is
Who could've thought it will become a real thing that Wired will make a video about this
Glad you used Malaysia as an example. One key difference of streets in Malaysia compared to neighbouring countries such as Thailand, Singapore and Philippines are the types of traffic signs, electrical wires and road texture.
Or the ubiquitous palm oil trees that dotted the land.
The few times I've played this game I have been satisfied with guessing the right continent. This guy is insane.
The dedication of this man is unimaginable, this is amazing!
TIL this is a community, mad respect to the pros who dedicate their time to this
This guy blows my mind. He's an absolute genius. I'd love to learn more about him. I wonder if he is a prodigy? So impressive 👏
He grew up in Arkansas and dropped out of college for a job in tech in SF. He just quit that job to pursue Geoguessr full time. Trevor is the absolute coolest
@@ExtraOrdinaryCharlie Thank you so much! Very cool indeed my friend 😎
he memorizes things and is very quick at recognizing patterns, doesn't take a genius but yes he's very talented at this that's for sure. Can't help to think these insane qualities he has could be used for something a bit more... useful hahah
@@minephlip Hmmm... like what? This talent is useful for stuff like games (which is what he does here), but I don't see it being applicable to much beyond that.
@@zmaj12321 The ability to deduce an answer by collating limited sets of information is a fundamental skill that is useful in almost any pursuit.
Happy for Rainbolt to get featured here. He's always so humble and so willing to teach others about the game.
Easiest thing to base guesses on is the side of road people drive on
wired did fantastic at visualizing everything trevor said in the way he says them
Happy to see Trevor getting the attention. He truly is amazing and pretty cool dude. I hope Ludwig hosts a tournament with Trevor as the final boss or something.
Man, honestly really impressive. Good analysis skills required!
I play GeoGuessr all the time. I am Australian but i live in Thailand so my primary search area is here because I cannot read the language so I find it challenging and must use tells much like Trevor does. Sometimes I am dropped into a rural location with nothing but ricefields and dirt roads for Kms and all I have is vegetation//crops, trees, sometimes a road distance marker. I have to say I have learnt so much about this country playing this. I also play my city/province often and it is amazing that in real-life I can walk into an area I have never physically been to yet recognise it and I know directions. What an amazing world we live in when you can stroll down a street almost anywhere is the world.
I only play for the guess i dont spend times to look at streetview, im not as fast as him but i love to learn the land contoure and all his notes.
Vibe guessing is so interesting it’s like when you see your own town you know it’s where you live
Some people seem to not understand this. His videos are 100% real but obviously, he only shows us the games where he does really well. It's still very impressive though.
this video has come up in my recommended so many times but i'm finally here bc of an epic bagel smackdown named "the rainbolt" in nyc 😂😂 absolutely madlad his energy is insane
This video introduced me to Geoguessr.
i love this guy ! im obsessed with his videos 😭
Oh my god he's so intelligent and quick, i'm obsessed
Wow, people never stop surprising me, sometimes in a bad way, and other times like this, in a good one.
rainbolt is just a legend. i love the attention that he and Geoguessr are getting nowadays
Great summary! Really enjoyed that video and I am excited for the future of our beloved game!
Brother kodiak spittin fax
He’s like the Sherlock Holmes for geoguesser. He solves it by instinct and then gives the reasoning afterwards
He even looks a bit like Johnny Lee Miller 😁
Except he's more making sense than Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch)
His explanation is so amazing..
3:09 You may notice the establishment called Caixa, which is a very common bank in Brazil.
Newer plates are blue in color, and they are even longer.
Dude needs a lifetime sponsorship by GeoGuesser
This is so awesome for the streaming community! Let's go Rainbolt^^
I have played this before without knowing anyone else who did. Gotta say I never knew it was this deep. Holmes' quote jumped into my mind “You see, but you do not observe”
This is a mind numbing amount of information to be processed in a fraction of a second!
The momment soil guessing popped up. You knew he was insane
When I was learning geoguessr, I stopped at the learning of camera angles, camera quality, blur spots, etc. That knowledge is exclusively helpful in just that game. I wanted to focus on knowledge that helped me learn about the world. But I guess that's why I'm not a pro
That's the difference between geographic knowledge and what is called "meta", things that can help you in the game that are not defining the country in general, but that are useful only in the game. I think it's funnier to play it without knowing all the meta but after a while you play, willingly or not, you start to notice and learn to recognize patterns, regardless of the type of detail, being that soil color or camera quality
I feel like mostly the middle range players use the car and camera the most. Once you get to Rainbolt’s level, you don’t even need any of those to instantly recognize countries. You can see how he recognized Guatemala without the obvious Google Car on the other side.
Ah yes, like the Guitar Hero players who just wanted to play guitar, or the speedrunners who just wanted to play video games quickly :)
You can go very far doing just that and that's fine. I agree that information only useful on google street view is less fun than information that's universal. But yeah, if you want to be among the best in the world, you have to learn the dirty meta specific for street view :)
Lol, you think you learned everything there is to be learned in the world, except car meta. That's some absurd level of overconfidence.
Every time the Internet brings out a genius like this I think back to all of the past and dismay at our inability to not properly utilise great talent nowadays
This is such a unique way of learning about different countries and cultures.
I’ve played this game before. It’s actually a lot of fun