Image:The Earth inMinecraft
If you haven’t noticed, it’s currently quite difficult—or at least inadvisable—to do much traveling around the world right now. But while we’re mostly stuck inside, a group of thousands of Minecraft players are busy making a life-size recreation of the Earth inside the game.The planet Earth is 197 million square miles. A Minecraft map is roughly 1.6 billion square miles. It’s theoretically possible to recreate the entirety of our planet within Minecraft, but limitations on the vertical height of Minecraft’s worlds has limited the capability. Until now. Advertisem*nt
Using the cubic chunks mod to allow for infinite height and depth and the Tera 1-to-1 mod to scan the planet’s surface, modders are recreating the planet Earth on a 1:1 scale within a Minecraft map.“The terra 1-to-1 mod takes the information from Google Maps and other geographical data archives and compiles it to create the 1:1 scale of the Earth in Minecraft terrain generation,” Minecrafter PippenFTS, who is working on the project, said in YouTube video. “Elevation data, tree cover data, roads, even climate data and soil suborder data, to make the planet Earth map as accurate to the real thing as possible.”PippenFTS has assembled a team of builders to dive into a persistent map and recreate the Earth’s human-made structures too. He wants to recreate every brick, every building, and every wonder of the world within the bounds of Minecraft. More than 60,000 people have at least nominally joined the project by becoming a part of his Discord server..He put the call out for builders to help make the dream a reality, and they’ve answered in droves. The project has a Patreon, a Reddit group of more than 6,000 members, and an active Discord.Builder evilpauwse is a moderator in the Discord for the project. He’s a college student in New York studying cyber security who joined the project after watching PippenFTS’ video.“I have played Minecraft for a significant time now and like many others, I have expressed an interest in creating massive structures and builds,” he said in an email. “This project satisfies a lot of people's desires to do so.” Advertisem*nt
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