Tour Middle Earth With an Interactive Google Chrome Experiment

In the latest experiment from Google Chrome, the world of the The Hobbit is ripe for exploration.

Fans have read about Middle Earth in  J.R.R. Tolkien's novels and they've seen it in in the subsequent films directed by Peter Jackson, but now they can fly above the elf city of Rivendell or sneak through the dark Trollshaws, all with the tap of the keyboard's direction keys or the swipe of a finger across a smartphone.

Users have a choice of a few areas of exploration, all of which appear in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which came out last year, and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which will hit theaters on Dec. 13. You can use your laptop, tablet, phone and anything else that supports chrome to fly over the whole fictional land, but you can currently only walk around the Trollshaws, Rivendell and the haunted fortress of Dol Guldur. Players must watch their step, as the eerie music that accompanies the video-game like experience foreshadows demons that can attack from nowhere to drag you away. Read more...