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A little off the beaten path...: Denmark has built a 1m:1block Minecraft World using real GIS data. Here's the home page, in Danish: http://gst.dk/emner/frie-data/minecraft/, and an ArsTechnica overview.

How did they do it, and how might others do the same for their home-land/country/province/county/city/backyard?

Screenshot

matt wilkie
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    Ordnance Survey (GB) did the same with their open data http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/innovate/developers/minecraft-map-britain.html Look at Anvil file format http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Anvil_file_format – Mapperz Apr 28 '14 at 21:38
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    Ulf Månsson did a neat Open Street Map to Minecraft conversion using FME, video here: http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2013/07/05/hangouts-with-james-fee-professional-minecraft-gis/ – blah238 Apr 28 '14 at 21:41
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    There is a related question with a Minecraft-specific answer here as well: Is there any experience using Computer Games to display GIS data? – blah238 Apr 28 '14 at 22:34
  • The company I work for is a platinum partner of the Ordnance Survey (UK). I will ask them tomorrow how they did it from a software perspective -- the data side is well-known, VML and Terrain 50, both open data. I can't promise anything, but it is worth a go. Cool question, the first time I have been able to get my kids to look at stack exchange :D – John Powell Dec 02 '14 at 21:26
  • here's an answer, don't have time to flesh it out yet, maybe someone else can: http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2013/07/15/arcgis-for-minecraft/ and http://thunderheadxpler.blogspot.ca/2013/07/minecraft-gamification-of-gis.html and https://github.com/mraad/RasterPlugin – matt wilkie Dec 03 '14 at 17:20

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Not sure about Minecraft but many games use grayscale bitmaps to create height maps. Basically you go take a DEM, convert it to a greyscale bitmap and replace a file in the games file system with it.

Some games that I know support this include:

The Silent Cartographer
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FME’s support for the Minecraft format and over 350 other data sources allows you to convert and load practically any data into your Minecraft world for use however you need. For example, build interactive 3D environments from GIS and CAD data that you can subsequently share with your audience.

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https://www.safe.com/solutions/for-applications/minecraft-data-conversion/

Fjellrev
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