gary lawrence murphy cynicizes hmmm just as i thought in other words it has no practical uses whatsoever tourism is the world s largest industry using this to preview your travels or figure out where you are would be very valuable online gaming continues to grow screw britannia real life britain would be a fun world to wander conquer explore virtually in role playing or real time strategy games and of course as james rogers points out it s an ideal display substrate for all sorts of other overlaid data maps are great photrealistic NUMBER d maps of everywhere which can have many other static and dynamic datasets overlaid are spectacular combining those last two thoughts consider the static world map in faded colors with patches here and there covered by live webcams stitched over the static info in bright colors it d be like the fog of war view in games like warcraft over the real world gordon 