The Ordnance Survey Innovation Labs team have been undertaking a rather unusual project, the recreation of the the UK in Minecraft.
According to their site, the UK has been recreated with 22 billion blocks covering over 220,000 square kilometres of mainland Great Britain and surrounding islands.
Anyone wanting to try this out can find key locations with the use of grid references which will teleport you to the locations with the /tp command follows by the grid reference starting out at the Ordnance Survey HQ in Southampton
To get started you’ll need a copy of Minecraft, 5GB of free space and they also recommend 4GB of memory.
Speaking to the BBC about the project, Graham Dunlop, OS Innovation Lab Manager, added:
“We think we may have created the largest Minecraft world ever built based on real-world data. The resulting map shows the massive potential not just for using Minecraft for computer technology and geography purposes in schools, but also the huge scope of applications for OS OpenData too.”
It may not look that picturesque but what do you expect in a world made up of blocks. Still, a useful educational tool for all the kids hooked on Minecraft.