Minecraft at a base level is a simple mining game where you build a little hut, fight of a mob here and there, and find a few diamonds. At the top tier of what the game can do, it can recreate a massive replica of Europe using data from NASA and science. That's quite the range, isn't it?
Reddit user FrankCesco posted the project, in which they made a 1:230 scale version of Europe in the sandbox game and it's incredible. The image of the whole of Europe looks so close to the real thing, we can barely tell it's not a satellite image of the continent. It's one of the most remarkable Minecraft projects we have ever seen.
The creator adds a description on Reddit that says, "Hello guys, many of you probably remember me as the creator of the Map of Italy at 1:250 scale. I upgraded my computer and I was finally able to expand it to cover the whole of Europe, even slightly increasing the total scale."
He even tells us how exactly he made the project happen, using data from sources to make sure this is the most accurate version of Europe possible on this scale. "To make this fully playable Minecraft map of Europe I used the program QGIS to analyze and adapt the NASA Elevation data, GEBCO Bathymetry data, ESA Land Cover data and WWF HydroSHEDS River data. The layers were then exported and worked on in the program WorldPainter to make the Minecraft world. The whole process took me 1 month, but this was the result of years of researching and mapmaking."
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Although it's in Italian, there is a 15-minute video FrankCesco made on the project with subtitles in English, so we can read what he has to say about the process. The video even shows him at ground level to see what it looks like when you're on the continent in-game. Frank confesses that he could, if he had a more powerful PC, even make the entire world as a map but he simply doesn't have the resources right now.
If you want to explore the map yourself, you can! The creator has kindly provided download links in the description of the YouTube video so go over to his channel if you're interested, but be mindful there are only specific versions of Minecraft this map will work on because of world constraints. Cheers, PCGamesN!