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."
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! ~~
The astute would notice under "How we built it" they talk about how the did just that.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
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