Ordnance Survey builds the entirety of Great Britain in Minecraft

British mapping company Ordnance Survey has re-created the entirety of Great Britain in Minecraft using real-world data.

Minecraft players have created some pretty danged amazing stuff in the game. This latest one might not be as visually spectacular, but the amount of technical awesomeness is mind blowing.

Ordnance Survey, Great Britain's governmental-mapping agency, has used its data to re-create (almost) the entire country in Minecraft. The massive 224,000 square kilometre map uses 22 billion blocks to represent the continent's terrain, built using Ordnance Survey's own tools: OS Terrain 50 and OS VectorMap District.

Included in the map are roads, water, forests, plains, mountains, urban areas and landmarks, such as Stonehenge, and users can download the map for free and modify it as they please.

"We think we may have created the largest Minecraft world ever built based on real-world data," Graham Dunlop, OS Innovation Lab manager, told the BBC. "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."

Once you have downloaded and installed the map, you start outside the Ordnance Survey head office on the outskirts of Southampton. From there, using OS getamap, you can search for locations using place names or postal codes for in-game coordinates and then use the teleport command to get there.

Then, depending on your available materials, you can go crazy: Minecraft style. Or maybe, for residents, just build your house.

You can grab the download for free on the Ordnance Survey website. Be warned, though — uncompressed, it comes to a massive 3.6GB.

Via www.pcgamesn.com