If you've ever wanted to pop over to my neck of the woods and you aren't already on some part of this little island nation, chances are you'd need to hop on a plane at some point, or make your way to France and take a train or ferry. Now though, you don't need to do any of that; you can explore the entirety of the UK in good ol' Minecraft.
Thanks to an intern working at the Great Britain's national mapping authority, Ordinance Survey, and its Innovation Labs division, who've collectively worked on bringing the British Isles to Minecraft. Using the organisations detailed maps of the UK, they've managed to import the whole thing into the game, creating a map file that's 3.6GB in size, making this one of the largest created worlds in the history of the game.
Throughout you'll find some of Britain's most famous landmarks, including mountains, rivers and roads, though the whole thing has been scaled down a little to contend with the parameters Minecraft sets on its world creation.
"Each block represents a ground area of 50 square metres. The raw height data is stored in metres and must be scaled down to fit within the 256 block height limit in Minecraft," OS said in a statement. "A maximum height of 2,500 metres was chosen, which means Ben Nevis, appears just over 128 blocks high. Although this exaggerates the real-world height, it preserves low-lying coastal features such as Bournemouth’s cliffs, adding interest to the landscape."
If you want to download the map, you can do so but just bare in mind that it is a large one so will take a little time even on fast connections. It may also take a while to build the game world once imported, but it should make for an interesting one if you want to see what sights the UK has in store.
