Comment by simonw
2 days ago
Is that flashcard deck a commercial/community project or is it something you assembled yourself? Sounds fascinating!
2 days ago
Is that flashcard deck a commercial/community project or is it something you assembled yourself? Sounds fascinating!
I made it myself.
I use Obsidian and the Spaced Repetition plugin, which I highly recommend if you want a super simple markdown format for flashcards and use Obsidian:
https://www.stephenmwangi.com/obsidian-spaced-repetition/
There are pre-made Geoguessr decks for Anki. However, I wouldn't recommend using them. In my experience, a fundamental part of spaced repetition's efficacy is in creating the flashcards yourself.
For example I have a random location flashcard section where I will screenshot a location which is very unique looking, and I missed in game. When I later review my deck I'm way more likely to properly recall it because I remember the context of making the card. And when that location shows up in game, I will 100% remember it, which has won me several games.
If there's interest I can write a post about this.
> In my experience, a fundamental part of spaced repetition's efficacy is in creating the flashcards yourself.
+1 to this, have found the same when going through the Genki Japanese-language textbook.
I'm assuming you're finding your workflow is just a little too annoying with Anki? I haven't yet strayed from it, but may check out your Obsidian setup.
I'd be fascinated to read more about this. I'd love to see a sample screenshot of a few of your cards too.
Sure, I'll write something up later. I'll give you two samples now.
One reason I love the Obsidian + Markdown + Spaced Repetition plugin combo is how simple it is to make a card. This is all it takes:
https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/sampatt/media@main/posts/2025-04...
The top image is a screenshot from a game, and the bottom image is another screenshot from the game when it showed me the proper location. All I need to do is separate them with a question mark, and the plugin recognizes them as the Q + A sides of a flashcard.
Notice the data at the bottom: <!--SR:!2025-04-28,30,245-->
That is all the plugin needs to know when to reintroduce cards into your deck review.
That image is a good example because it looks nothing like the vast majority of Google Street View coverage in the rest of Kenya. Very people people would guess Kenya on that image, unless they have already seen this rare coverage, so when I memorize locations like this and get lucky by having them show up in game, I can often outright win the game with a close guess.
I also do flashcards that aren't strictly locations I've found but are still highly useful. One example is different scripts:
https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/sampatt/media@main/posts/2025-04...
Both Cambodia and Thailand have Google Street View coverage, and given their geographical proximity it can be easy to confuse them. One trick to telling them apart is their language. They're quite different. Of course I can't read the languages but I only need to identify which is which. This is a great starting point at the easier levels.
The reason the pros seem magical is because they're tapping into much less obvious information, such as the camera quality, camera blur, height of camera, copyright year, the Google Street View car itself, and many other 'metas.' It gets to the point where a small smudge on the camera is enough information to pinpoint a specific road in Siberia (not an exaggeration). They memorize all of that.
When possible I make the images for the cards myself, but there are also excellent sources that I pull from (especially for the non-location specific cards), such as Plonkit:
https://www.plonkit.net/
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I’m interested from a learning science perspective. It’s a nice finding even if anecdotal