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."

Comments

Seems to be a concentration of Creepers

[Anonymous Coward]

around Manchester....

Earth Map

[CFBMoo1]

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/

Re:I made one of Halifax NS

[Atzanteol]

The astute would notice under "How we built it" they talk about how the did just that.

Re:I made one of Halifax NS

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

It's over 1 click, and it's time for your alarm bells to go past the point of ambiguity.

Re:How?

[Fnord666]

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?

Absolutely. You can find a good explanation here.

Description of the process

[Fnord666]

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.

Important caveat

[Anubis IV]

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.

Re:Important caveat

[the_arrow]

I wouldn't call anything from a game, movie or TV-series "real-world".

Re:What is it with Minecraft that appeals to dulla

[Lithdren]

Wow you're so hip I wonder how you see over your own pelvis.

Re:I made one of Halifax NS

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Hmm...I never noticed I had a clone on slashdot.

Neat!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kw_d3d0XAo

Now which one of us is the original copy? We'll always be left guessing.

Re:What is it with Minecraft that appeals to dulla

[psmears]

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?

Re:I made one of Halifax NS

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's because texas is indeed moderately sizable. Why, it's almost the size of Alberta (6th largest Canadian province)

Re:I made one of Halifax NS

[peragrin]

True but

Canada Population 35 Million
Texas Population 26 Million
Great Britain Population 63 Million.

Population density also counts.

It is why china and India, once they get their populations up to speed will be the places to worry about.

on the flip side the same reason why they are so populaous will take them that much longer to get up to speed.

Re:What is it with Minecraft that appeals to dulla

[wonkey_monkey]

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.