Minecraft Game Adds Ordnance Survey GB Terrain Data
Minecraft game includes Ordnance Survey GB terrain data By Matthew Wall Technology reporter, BBC News
23 September 2013
Minecraft, the popular video game of building and creating monsters, lets you incorporate Ordnance Survey terrain data from Great Britain into your blockwork virtual world.
The game's 33 million players can create worlds on top of geographically accurate landscapes covering 224,000 sq km (86,000 sq miles) of Britain.
Joseph Braybrook, an intern at OS's Innovation Labs, created the GB Minecraft world in just two weeks.
It makes use of free OS OpenData products.
"We believe that we have created the most expansive Minecraft world ever created using real-world data," Graham Dunlop, OS Innovation Lab Manager.
"The resultant map shows the immense potential of Minecraft not only for geography and computer technology in schools, but also for the wide range of OS OpenData applications."
Minecraft was invented in 2009 by Swede Markus "Notch", and is a virtual world that is made up cubes of different materials such as sand, rock and the lava.
The players can collaborate to build shelters, construct things from raw materials, and fight various monsters.
More than 22 billion Minecraft blocks are contained in the OS GB world.
After downloading the map to Minecraft the players are able to enter the 3D virtual world through OS's head office located in Southampton. Info From there, they can recreate real-life features such as Stonehenge or imagine buildings such as Hogwarts castle. Srazy
The OS map products include OS Terrain 50 and OS VectorMap are combined to create a 3D representation of the earth's surface, overlayed with features like roads, woodlands, and water.
Players can build their own structures on top of realistic terrain.
As OS is the GB's main national mapping authority, its information covers the mainland and its surrounding islands, but it does not include Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Isle of Man or Channel Islands.
Ordnance Survey
