Google brings LEGO to your browser

You know the amount of time you’ve spent in your childhood with your LEGO set and remember the fun you had. In a throwback to those memories Google now brings to you Build, a virtual Lego play set that you can assemble right on your browser. Build is a collaborative 3D building experience and is just an example of the extent of browser technology. Build is an assortment of a whopping 8 trillion bricks made with WebGL that ’enables powerful 3D graphics right in the browser and demonstrates the upper limit of current WebGL graphics performance.’ Users can assemble these LEGO bricks atop Google Maps and this way, then can pick a plot alongside someone else’s.

Happy Build-ing!

To begin with, users need to go to buildwithchrome.com and on clicking on Build, one can head straight to picking their plot. Once a user has picked his choice of an area to build, he can proceed. Here, the user is greeted with a section to their left, complete with LEGO bricks and here they also have the choice to build using LEGO bricks in the colour of their choice. The bottom of the screen houses tips, which you can look at to know how to place bricks, remove them, rotate the brick, how to zoom, undo and so on. Once you feel you’ve attained perfection, you can hit Publish and doing that is the only way of saving your hard work, since you cannot save your build, while you’re still at it, which does seem to be a bit of a downer since you’re always worried of losing it. Also, you cannot make any changes once you have Published your build. 

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Google recommends that you use Chrome to make your builds, since the browser can can handle the graphics required.

In the official blog post, Google adds that, “Right now Build is an experiment we’ve been working on in Sydney. We’re launching first in Australia and New Zealand and hope to open up in other countries soon. This year is the 50th anniversary of the LEGO brick in Australia and Build joins the celebration of the LEGO Festival of Play online.”

So, there you go. Spill your ideas out, but before you do that be sure to read through some house rules :

• Be original. Your build must be from your own work.
• Be nice. Don’t create builds to offend or shock others.
• Play safe. Don’t give out personal details.
• Don’t preach. Don’t promote religious or political ideologies.
• Play don’t sell. Don’t advertise a brand.
• Keep it clean. Don’t build anything that’s inappropriate.
• Have fun. Express your creativity and free your imagination!

Happy Build-ing!