Great Britain rebuilt - in Minecraft: Intern reveals 22-BEEELLION block map

A summer intern at the UK's Ordnance Survey has pumped up the country's map data into 22-billion-block representation of Great Britain in Minecraft. The Ordnance Survey is perfectly happy with the outcome – so much so that it's published the 3D model, which covers 224 thousand square kilometres of Great Britain. The intern, …

[Tom 7]

Let the invasion begin!

Are there other formats this can easily be converted to?

[HollyHopDrive]

Re: Let the invasion begin!

Blimey a government IT project that was delivered on time and on budget. Oh and it didn't cost £10bn and is probably more useful than anything ever delivered by [insert consultancy of choice] or the likes... ;-)

Joking aside, look what happens when you use decent internal resources rather than crappy large consultancies.....

Just saying......

(And yes flamers I am aware that this was a small thing not a "big project" but more of this kind of thing and stop pissing money away on hospital IT projects - encourage this kind of person with this kind of mindset)

[tentimes]

Re: Let the invasion begin!

I totally agree. This is a superb use of time and I really think this can lead somewhere. I can't think of the application just yet, but there is bound to be one.

I'm off to download it and see what it looks like!

[MrZoolook]

Re: Let the invasion begin!

Quote: I'm off to download it and see what it looks like!

If we believe the article, it looks like a scaled cubic version of Britain.

[Panimu]

Re: Let the invasion begin!

It's the OpenData project, you can go squirt it into anything.

[Ralph B]

Call Arthur Scargill!

I'm wondering if the underground detail has been carried over. OS certainly have the geological map data. If so, we could see Britain's coal mines reopen, at least in the Minecraft version.

[bazza]

Easter Egg

He's an intern; there's bound to be an easter egg in there somewhere. Anyone going to go looking? It could take a while...

[richardcox13]

Re: Easter Egg

The blog entry about it shows an image isn't from the OS map data...

http://blog.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/2013/09/minecraft-creating-a-map-of-great-britain/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=minecraft-creating-a-map-of-great-britain

[big_D]

Re: Easter Egg

Did you read the text that went along with it? They specifically stated that that map was created by somebody else, they used it as an example of what had been created until now.

[Amorous Cowherder]

I do occasionally like a little play with MC, some great maps ( especially the Game of Thrones jobbie! ) and it's good laugh for my kids to have a virtual "LEGO" kit to play with rather than playing some mindless dress-up/sweet-crunching rubbish on their tablets!

[Anonymous Coward]

I do like how...

...this one guys pet project became "We did this, we achived that, we used that...."

Ah management glory hunting.

If you goes wrong, you did it; if it goes right, we did it.

[Why Not?]

Re: I do like how...

That's internship for you!

Prepares you for the reality of work life.

[Spoonsinger]

Re: Prepares you for the reality of work life.

I hope he actually got paid - you know like you did on old sandwich degree courses.

(I was very happy with the money I received on my placement year, but not sure it's like that nowadays. )

[frank ly]

Re: I do like how...

"... Joseph Braybrook, used the Ordnance's OS OpenData products ..."

"To build the model, Braybrook and his supervisors at the Ordnance took ..."

I think the organisation itself and everybody involved deserves credit and admiration.

[Mike Taylor]

Playmobile or it didn't happen.

[returnmyjedi]

Just because you can't seek out topless sunbathers in MC does not make it an inferior product.

[Tom_]

Re: Why bother ?

Because it gave the intern a chance to learn about working with large datasets whilst doing somethng creative with the OS data in a way that makes it accessible to others.

Better than spending the summer fetching coffees and printing out emails.

[Irongut]

Re: Why bother ?

Better than spending the summer getting more and more frustrated with ArcMap till you decide never to apply for a job at OS or have anything else to do with GIS too.

[richardcox13]

Re: Why bother ?

You cannot build your own things in Google Maps.

Hmm... I wonder if ComputerCraft is up to a mini-Minecraft inside Minecraft: at home playing Minecraft at home playing Minecraft…

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why bother ?

> You cannot build your own things in Google Maps.

Tell that to all the people drawing crude cock and balls on roofs and in cornfields.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why bother ?

can't build a giant automated factory, solar relays, moon base and perform magical shinanigans on google maps while breeding bees

[J. Cook]

Re: Why bother ? (AD@10:36)

I see you've played around with Feed The Beast and all the various and sundry addins for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why bother ? (AD@10:36)

I originally did tekkit, then lite, then big dig, now FTB Unleashed with Mo' Creatures, Aether, LittleMaidMob and Flans. Looking at building a 1.6.2 mod pack sometime soon. As well as vanilla for games.

[itzman]

Re: Why bother ?

turtles all the way down?

[Anonymous Coward]

Proceed....

....with this sort of thing! Any 'negative nellies' in sector 2, please sod off, and join the line for your full frontal lobotomy.

[NomNomNom]

Re: Proceed....

Do not proceed. You have been trained to be an obedient component of the machine.

Go to school, get a job, get on the "property ladder". Have a family, breed more drones. Watch adverts on TV closely. Consume products. Read the tabloids. Have "opinions". "Vote" every four years. Focus on the Economy and GDP. Go to work. Get in line, queue on foot, in cars, on the train. Don't question. Take a holiday in summer. Take photos. Get old. Retire.

Follow the cycle dictated by the machine:

Monday-Friday: Work.

Saturday-Sunday: Consume.

Travel to Work at approximately 9am. You must go home in the evening and come back the next day. Do not question any of this.

Your fellow drones will interrogate you and ask where you work, whether you have a partner, where you went on holiday, where you live, whether you have children. They will expect regular updates and "progress" in your life according to the machine. If they find your progress to be wanting they may deem you to be a non-conformist and you will be shunned.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Proceed....

It's not so bad, NomNomNom.... They...go in through your nose and...they let you keep the piece of brain they cut out. Look! [holds up a jar with a piece of brain in it] Ooh! Hello! Hello there! Who's that big man there? Who's that?

[Maharg]

Re: Proceed....

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself.

Choose your future.

Choose life.

[MJI]

I will get my sons to download

They will like this

[Parax]

Scale?

So what is the scale?

If each 1km grid square is a 20x20 block are we saying it's 50:1?

That's not bad, but I'd love a 10:1 or even 5:1!

[simbo52]

Re: Scale?

The scale does feel a little odd... you couldn't your house on there for a start (even as a single block) but then when you try to fly around the UK you realise how unfeasible it would have been to make it bigger.

[Andrew Moore]

hmmmm, off to do the same thing the the OSi data set...

[NomNomNom]

If its not to the same scale as a minecraft character you lose the ability of "being there", which is 99% of the potential gone. Perhaps they could have made many higher resolution maps rather than one big low resolution one.

How am I going to build Swindon on a map with such low resolution?

[Kevin Johnston]

You could always

just do your own model of the Isle of Wight. Not sure if it would handle the model village in Godshill which is a model of Godshill complete with the model village which includes a model village. Seem to recall it has four iterations but it's been a while.

Would certainly allow a much better scale though

[Ralph B]

@Kevin Johnston Re: You could always

Since it's all in software, the model village could be done with a scaled recursive call to the apropriate section of the original IoW map.

As model-you leans in to have a look, you will observe a tiny model-you leaning in to have a look at a yet tinier model-you, and so on.

[BorkedAgain]

Re: You could always

I remember that recursive model village! Very cool... :)

[The Indomitable Gall]

NomNomNom...

If your person appears out of scale with the gameworld, just chant "Fee fie fou fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman" as you stomp around....

[John Galt]

Seems an excellent intern project

The important skills demonstrated are mapping and merging large datasets and interacting well with other staff. MoD, DoD and similar all around the world are using game engines for planning and analysis work, so developing techniques for importing data to create simulated worlds is highly relevant to the Ordnance Survey's function and mission. In geospatial disciplines this is what "big data" looks like. First create a set of surfaces and then paint other information on the surfaces.

I suspect the coarse resolution was a compromise on dataset size. Hopefully there will be a good paper on the process so others can implement finer resolutions and build models for other game engines.

On any measure well done!

[John Galt]

Seems an excellent intern project

The important skills demonstrated are mapping and merging large datasets and interacting well with other staff. MoD, DoD and similar all around the world are using game engines for planning and analysis work, so developing techniques for importing data to create simulated worlds is highly relevant to the Ordnance Survey's function and mission. In geospatial disciplines this is what "big data" looks like. First create a set of surfaces and then paint other information on the surfaces.

I suspect the coarse resolution was a compromise on dataset size. Hopefully there will be a good paper on the process so others can implement finer resolutions and build models for other game engines.

On any measure well done!

[The Indomitable Gall]

Braybrook?

Not a hugely common name that... any chance he's related to Andrew Braybrook of Graftgold, creator of some of the cleverest games of the 80s?

[Pete Spicer]

Re: Braybrook?

I just wondered that myself. It seems almost fitting, really.

[Velv]

Excellent - a new way to train foreign troops and terrorists and killer robots so they can rampage across England's green and pleasant land.

No, I'm not being serious. This is a good demonstration of taking one set of data and using another engine to examine and render it. Has all sorts of positive uses. Well done.

[Anonymous Coward]

The perfect venue to model a "28 Days Later" zombie invasion!!

Or maybe Nessie leaving Loch Ness to lay waste to Glasgow or London.

[Chris Evans]

Credit where credit is due!

Whilst it appears that they've credited Joseph Braybrook in the press release, he gets no mention at:

http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/innovate/developers/minecraft-map-britain.html

come on Ordnance Survey show some people skills!

[Mannginger]

Love it!

Great use of the Internship IMO

[Pat Volk]

I wonder

If he put some minerals in the rock beyond coal. I'd love to see someone digging a hole in the countryside looking for redstone "coz the game 'ad it there". Or diamonds. Might have to d/l it just so I can fill up Old Trafford with some creepers....

[C. P. Cosgrove]

This could be useful . . .

As a fairly enthusiastic if not very competent simmer, I could see this being very useful in other games, such as building simulated railway routes. If you got the geography, all you need to do is lay the tracks, dig the embankments and tunnels, build the bridges. Wow !

The hardest part I always found was building the bloody scenery !

Chris Cosgrove

[Stilted Banter]

A pedant writes...

The process, once commenced, takes about 7 hours on a desktop PC

How long does it take if you don't commence it?

[ecofeco]

Pretty cool

Impressive actually.