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Ordnance Survey Creates Minecraft Model of Great Britain
First time accepted submitter jeremyp writes "Ordnance Survey intern Joseph Braybrook has created a Minecraft World based upon accurate terrain mapping data of Great Britain. The world accurately represents the whole of Great Britain and surrounding islands (but excludes Northern Ireland and the Channel Islands). It maps 224,000 square kilometres of Great Britain and contains 22 billion blocks. Graham Dunlop (Ordnance Survey Innovation Lab Manager) says: 'We think we may have created the largest Minecraft world ever built based on real-world data.' The map can be downloaded from the Ordnance Survey."
That's impressive. I know how much of a pain it was to do just 12 x12 km of Halifax Regional Municipality
around Manchester....
Can you give a glimpse at the process this requires? I assume it has to be algorithmic in some way but it's still baffling to me how it's done. What sort of errors happen?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Now we can know with certainty where the coal, iron, and diamond deposits are, so the mining industries don't have to waste resources doing core sample testing looking for anything of value. On top of that, we can also warn them beforehand where the zombie spawners are, so the UK isn't overrun by the undead.
Here's one of the whole Earth at a 1:1500 scale. I'd love to see them regenerate this with the biom updates they currently have in the snapshots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnNbR_PIMJM
http://www.planetminecraft.com/project/the-recreation-of-the-earth-11500-scale/
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Someone needs to tell the BBS that Hogwarts is a real castle. They seem to think it's imaginary.
For those who might be interested, here is a link to the ordnance survey page where they describe the process used to create the map.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Just pixelate the texture of a targa dem drape at a resolution great enough for your block size. If you need a numerical stream for further programmatic block modification then take the pixel elevation and lat lon.
The question that might be interesting is are the blocks georeferenced, then you have a model that could be on a minecraft earth. Tile that and you could have a great strategy game. My guess is that this has military applications as this would be the fastest way to represent a terrain for virtual strategy.
We think we may have created the largest Minecraft world ever built based on real-world data.
Emphasis mine.
While extremely impressive, it's definitely not the largest based on data from another source. For instance, World of Warcraft's Azeroth has already been largely recreated to the tune of 68B blocks using a similar automated process. There are other projects to recreate Westeros and Middle Earth that are already well underway, though both appear to be being done by hand, so though they've had a lot of progress, I'd doubt they're into the billions of blocks placed.
Had they mentioned it I wouldn't have bothered reading the article, let alone download the map.
Wow you're so hip I wonder how you see over your own pelvis.
The well known group Spinal Tap, complained about the size of Stonehenge.
What is it with sanctimonious twonks who have nothing better to do than belittle the passions of others?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
We think we may have created the largest Minecraft world ever built based on real-world data.
Cue the "Google Earth" version in 3...2...
Koans and fables for the software engineer
No one's stopping you from being passionate about Farmville's allowing you escape the complexities of real life.
But why must you belittle my passion, which is to point and laugh when humans take their games too seriously?
Shorter "time to penis". That is, from the first time a person first launches the game until they've constructed a penis.
Because it's unkind. Why not try contributing positively to the general well-being of the human race?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Shame the government has to waste money paying people to play Farmville,
Err, you do know the Ordnance Survey entirely funds itself from selling maps/map data, and gives a proportion of its profits to the Treasury?
Need to type accents and special characters in Windows? Use FrKeys
And this isn't how it should be. The Met Office and OS should give away their data to the country, and be funded by taxation.
The idea that a national surveying organisation should make profit is absurd.
Discouraging people from wasting hundreds of hours on a silly game - or maybe hundreds of millions of hours in total across all users - is far kinder to the human race than promoting that game.
And I say that without even intending to be kind. It's just incidentally kinder, from a utilitarian perspective.
Depends on your definition of "waste". I spend hours playing Minecraft with my kids each weekend - it's almost a reward at the end of the week for spending the rest of the time doing "useful" stuff. In the long run, we're all dead, including the kids. I think you've picked limited definitions in order to rationalize your misanthropy and justify your rather preachy assertions.
Sorry for you.
Discouraging people from wasting hundreds of hours on a silly game - or maybe hundreds of millions of hours in total across all users - is far kinder to the human race than promoting that game.
Who are you to decide? Come to think of it, what are you doing wasting time on Slashdot when you could be out feeding the homeless or becoming a doctor? Get cracking on that cure for cancer, slacker!
It's just incidentally kinder, from a utilitarian perspective.
The same has been said of eugenics, among other things.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
and for example get rid of the Silverlight crap? Make their shit portable? Open source some proper data?
Ordnance Survey is pathetic.
Wow, such angry defensiveness.
"Stop disliking things I like!"
I'm not stopping you from playing your silly time-wasting game. I'm just telling you it's silly and time-wasting.
If you think that identifying a silly game as time-wasting is "misanthropic" then you have either led a very sheltered life or you have a playful love of hyperbole. If the latter, carry on; if the former, perhaps you should play Minecraft less and go out more at the weekends?
Who are you to decide?
Bla bla morality is relative everything is okay stop having an opinion different from mine.
what are you doing wasting time on Slashdot
I think I just established that I was, albeit incidentally, not wasting time. If I've discouraged someone from playing Minecraft, I've done a public service.
The same has been said of eugenics
Yeah ethical living is about weighing up different priorities. Encouraging people to stop playing Minecraft doesn't result in murder.
(Although if you had a better grasp of reality, you wouldn't be playing Minecraft, would you?)
Bla bla morality is relative everything is okay stop having an opinion different from mine.
You're welcome to have a different opinion from mine - it's assuming yours must be the correct one that makes you come off as sanctimonious. In my opinion.
I think I just established that I was, albeit incidentally, not wasting time. If I've discouraged someone from playing Minecraft, I've done a public service.
...in your opinion. And if you feel passionate enough about this that you'd like to encourage the world to play Minecraft a little less and go out and enjoy the world a little more, you could try to do so using reasoned argument rather than insulting your target audience.
Yeah ethical living is about weighing up different priorities. Encouraging people to stop playing Minecraft doesn't result in murder.
(Although if you had a better grasp of reality, you wouldn't be playing Minecraft, would you?)
I don't play Minecraft.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Well of course I'm going to come into this assuming that my opinion is probably correct. If people always sat on the fence with everything, never daring to speak up lest they be considered sanctimonious, all sorts of horrible things would happen. I never said I'm not willing to reconsider my opinion, though.
As noted above, my words having a benefit is incidental, not primary.
Glad to hear you don't play Minecraft! Since you seem to have sustained a conversation more than 5 minutes, was about to positively review my opinion of the articulacy of fanatics, but I see it's not necessary now.
I'm guessing they are using a flat projection, so claiming it's "accurate" is potentially questionable, depending on your definition of the word. Can any flat map be described as "accurate"? I guess it probably can, actually, as long as it is consistent and the projection is well defined. Just like a photograph or a painting of an object can be called "accurate" even though the object is actually three-dimensional.
Sheesh.. Was this some sort of glorified ATOR moment, or were people actually arguing with the most obvious troll on the internet..