Chrome Blog
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Bringing hobbits, dwarves and dragons to screens everywhere
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
You don’t need to be besties with a Wizard to share an adventure in Middle-earth—just point your favorite browser to
goo.gl/TheHobbit
on your laptop, phone or tablet to check out “
Journey through Middle-earth
,” the latest
Chrome Experiment
.
Inspired by the upcoming motion picture "
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
,” “Journey through Middle-earth” brings the locations and characters from the movie trilogy to life with a mix of modern web technologies. It was developed by North Kingdom in collaboration with Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures.
Your adventure
starts
on a beautiful, interactive map of Middle-earth. Zoom in to explore Trollshaw Forest, Rivendell and Dol Guldur (with more locations to come in the next few weeks). Click on each one to learn its history and meet the characters who inhabit it, or dive further to test your wits on a unique survival challenge.
The immersive 3D graphics in “Journey through Middle-earth” were built with CSS3 and WebGL, which you might recognize from
previous Chrome Experiments
. But “Journey through Middle-earth” is the first Chrome Experiment designed to bring this beautiful, 3D experience to mobile, thanks to
support for WebGL in Chrome for Android
on devices with high-end graphics cards.
The rich audio effects and sound manipulation are delivered through the Web Audio API, which is
now supported
on both Chrome for Android and Chrome for iPhone and iPad. Although WebGL isn’t supported on iOS, Chrome users can still experience most of “Journey through Middle-earth” on their iPhones and iPads. We can’t wait to see what sort of rich experiences developers will build as modern web technologies become available on more types of devices.
Circle
+Google Chrome
to stay updated as more Middle-earth locations get released in the coming weeks. You can also check out the
Chromium Blog
and read the team’s
technical case study
if you feel like geeking out a bit more.
Adventure is
a click away
. Just watch out for the trolls!
Posted by Christos Apartoglou, Product Marketing Manager & Part-time Dragon-slayer
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