The Complete Hop.Earth Guide
Drive real roads anywhere on Earth in your browser — the Hop.Earth project (some players know it as Project Hop Earth) turns OpenStreetMap into a drivable world. Here's the full controls list, what we found when we tested the car-that-won't-spawn problem ourselves, and the helicopter and weapons almost nobody knows are in there.
Play Hop.Earth Free → Opens the official game at hop.earth · Free · Account needed to enterSomething broken?
Straight to the fix: car won't spawn · not loading / black screen · full controls list
Hop.Earth Controls — Full Keyboard List
The game never shows you these up front, which is why most people bounce in the first two minutes. You can pull this list up in game at any time by holding H.
Read this one first: check you've landed before you blame a key
The single most common complaint about Hop.Earth is "I pressed F and nothing happened, where's the car?" — and the usual answer, that you simply pressed the wrong key, doesn't survive contact with testing. When we played it ourselves, the character repeatedly froze at its 2,000 m spawn height and every input was ignored, real keyboard presses included.
So: watch the ground for ten seconds first. Still descending? Wait. Not moving at all? Reload and rejoin — no key gets you out of it.
Once you are actually standing on a loaded road, the game's own prompt says to hold X to summon a vehicle, let it settle, then press F to get in. We go through what that claim rests on — and the players who dispute it — on the car not spawning page.
The keys you actually need first
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| X | Hold to summon a vehicle, per the in-game prompt — some players report it not working. While driving: tap to reset, hold to return to the road |
| F | Enter / exit the car |
| WASD | Drive or walk (arrow keys work too) |
| J | Nitro — hold it to jump the car over broken geometry |
| Space | Handbrake / kickflip |
| H | Opens the game's own help and controls screen |
That is enough to get moving. The interface keys, the weapon slots and the full helicopter scheme are laid out in the complete controls guide, along with what each key is genuinely useful for.
Touch and gamepad
On a phone or tablet you walk by moving a finger in the lower-left of the screen, steer with the left thumbstick, and aim and shoot with your right hand. The game also notes that a gamepad or joystick may work.
How to Play: the First Five Minutes
- Make an account. Nickname, email, password and a captcha. There's no guest mode on the front page right now.
- Join the official lobby. Under OFFICIAL there's a lobby called "Start Here!" running in single player mode. Start there — the COMMUNITY list below it is labelled UNSTABLE by the developers themselves, and some of those servers show up as simply down.
- Pick where you want to be. You land on a map view — Monte Carlo by default. There's a "Go to" search box at the top, though when we tried it the map stayed put; clicking your destination directly on the map is the reliable way. Details on the where to drive page.
- Make sure you actually land. You drop in from 2,000 m under a parachute. If the ground isn't getting closer after ten seconds you're stuck, and no key will help — reload and rejoin.
- Hold X to summon a car. Wait for it to arrive and stop moving. Don't rush this step.
- Press F to get in, then W to drive. When you hit a broken intersection and get stuck, hold J to hop over it.
That's the whole loop. Everything else — races, weapons, the helicopter — sits on top of it. The full walkthrough, including every screen you'll see and the traps between them, is in the complete beginner's guide.
Common Problems, Actually Solved
Hop.Earth is openly an early-access project. The developers say to expect unfinished, still-evolving mechanics and "lots of bugs". These four cover almost everything people run into.
The car won't spawn
"Where's the car? F does nothing."
Check you're on the ground before you touch the keyboard. We measured this in a live session: the character sat at exactly 2,000 m with zero descent over four seconds, and holding X, pressing F and even sending twenty real keypresses of W moved it precisely nowhere. If that's your situation, reload and rejoin — there's no key for it.
Once you've landed on a loaded road, the in-game prompt says to hold X to summon a vehicle and press F once it stops moving. That's what the game tells you; two players who got further than we did report it working differently, and the full page on this lays out all the evidence rather than picking a winner.
You're stuck on a broken intersection
The car catches on invisible geometry, or you sink through the road.
This is a known, documented limitation: around 95% of roads and intersections render correctly, but many intersections are still broken. The official workaround is to press and hold J to jump your car over the broken geometry — which is exactly where the game's name comes from. If you end up somewhere hopeless, tap X to reset the car or hold X to get returned to the road.
Everything is pitch black
You spawn in and can barely see anything.
Hop.Earth follows real-world time, so dropping into a city where it's currently the middle of the night gets you a genuinely dark world. It's not a bug and it's not your GPU. Move to the daylight side of the planet — click the spot you want directly on the map view, since the "Go to" search box didn't move the map for us — or stay and drive it at night. The developers have been working on night rendering, though we can only vouch for what we have seen ourselves: it is genuinely dark.
Stuttering, or terrain that never loads
The world hitches every few seconds, or you're parachuting forever with nothing underneath.
Every road and intersection is generated on your own device in real time as you travel, from map and elevation data — so the stutter is a hardware and bandwidth problem, not a server one. The developers acknowledge "some jank when approaching the next tile" and say upcoming updates will reduce it. Close other tabs, use a desktop browser with hardware acceleration on, and give a new area a few seconds to build itself before you start driving.
The endless parachute is a different animal. A slow descent means terrain is still being built and waiting works. No descent at all means you're stuck, and only a reload helps — we sampled the altitude and got the same 1999.9 m eight times in a row. Both cases, and how to tell them apart, are on the not loading page.
Where to Drive: the 2-Metre Terrain
Not all of the planet is rendered at the same quality, and this changes the experience far more than people expect.
| Region | Terrain resolution |
|---|---|
| France & Spain incl. Corsica, the Balearics and the Canary Islands | Up to 2 m grid — dramatically sharper hills, cambers and mountain roads |
| Rest of the planet | 30 m base resolution |
| Antarctica | Not available |
More countries are being brought up to high resolution one at a time. Until then, if you want to see what the engine can really do, drive in France or Spain — the Alps, the Pyrenees, Corsican coast roads, Canary Island volcano climbs.
It's also no accident that the official lobby drops you into Monte Carlo. It sits right in the high-resolution zone, and it's where a large share of community races are built — the Monaco street circuit is right there.
How to Create and Share a Race
Worth setting expectations first: the developers state that the game is currently free roam, and that racing and GPS navigation are still on the way. What exists today is a route builder plus a shared session, which is why most entries on the public race list still show a top speed of 0.00 — plenty of people build a route and never actually run it.
- Hit "Create a race" on the map view.
- Click your start point. A green START marker drops onto the map.
- Click your finish point. A red FINISH marker appears and the game traces a route along the real road network between them.
- Check the route panel. It reports length, weather, road surface, elevation and the name of the starting street — for example 1.82 km · Very good · Asphalt · 42 m · Quai Antoine 1er.
- Start it, share it, or reset it. Share hands you a link; reset clears both markers so you can redraw.
One practical warning: if a race link gets posted publicly and goes viral, that session fills with strangers and becomes chaotic. If you arrived from a link on social media and it's a mess, start your own session from the front page instead.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why won't my car spawn in Hop.Earth?
Check you've landed first — we found the character can freeze at its 2,000 m spawn height, and in that state nothing responds to any key. If you're on the ground, the game's prompt says to hold X to summon a vehicle, let it settle, then press F. See the full breakdown, including the players who report that sequence not working.
Is Hop.Earth free?
Yes. It runs in the browser with no download. There's an optional Topup for early supporters — card, PayPal or Ethereum — but you don't need it to play.
Do I need an account?
Yes, currently. The front page asks for a nickname, email and password before letting you in.
Can I play Hop.Earth on mobile?
There are touch controls, but the game builds terrain on your device in real time, which is demanding. A desktop browser with hardware acceleration is much more reliable.
Why are there no buildings in Hop.Earth?
A deliberate choice. As the developers put it: "There are no buildings. Who needs them anyway? You can't drive on them." The focus is drivable roads, intersections and tunnels with real physics — buildings from OpenStreetMap have been done elsewhere.
What map data does it use?
OpenStreetMap for roads, plus satellite elevation data — the game credits Copernicus DEM, IGN RGE ALTI and CNIG LIDAR.
Can I drive on my own street?
If it's mapped in OpenStreetMap, yes — it's the first thing most people do. Getting there is the fiddly part: the "Go to" search box didn't move the map when we tried it, so pan and click your street directly on the map view before hopping in.
Is Hop.Earth finished?
No, and it doesn't pretend to be. It's an early-access project in active development, with racing and GPS navigation still on the way.
Go Deeper
Other Languages
Same guide, written for players in their own language.
Games Like Hop.Earth
| Game | How it differs |
|---|---|
| Slow Roads | Endless procedurally generated scenery instead of real places. Far more stable — the right call when Hop.Earth is having a bad day. |
| CarInMap | Also drives on real map data, lighter and more casual. |
| Google Earth | Not a game — but if you mainly wanted to look at real places, it's the frictionless version. |
Unofficial fan site. PlayHopEarth.com is an independent player-made guide. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or operated by Hop.Earth or its developer, and it does not host the game — every play link points to the official site at hop.earth. The control list comes from the game's own help screen — hold H in game to confirm it yourself. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors; elevation data © EU/ESA/IGN/CNIG.