In the past year Minecraft has had a massive resurgence in popularity. The building based game hit its height of popularity in 2013, and since then public interest has steadily declined, that is until mid-2019. 2019 was the 10 year anniversary of the game, so a lot of players returned to the game for the sake of nostalgia. Once they started playing again they either realized how fun it was, or were impressed enough by the new updates to give it another go. What many people don’t realize is that the player base has remained massive, it is mainly the fact that so many YouTubers and influencers started playing again that turned the public eye back to Minecraft’s blocky world.
In terms of the game’s blockiness – it has always been a signature of the game that the entire world is composed of one meter cubes (along with a few smaller more detailed items). Vanilla (un-modded) Minecraft worlds are procedurally generated, and random outside of biome parameters, but in real world proportions, Minecraft worlds are actually far larger than the real Earth. Earth is 197 million square miles, while the confines of a Minecraft world contain a massive 1.6 billion square miles.
Players have always been interested in recreating Earth in the game, and in fact many have, but always on a reduced scale because while horizontally Minecraft can easily hold the Earth, vertically the game is limited to 255 meters from bedrock to the building cap. This means that any attempt at a 1:1 earth reconstruction would be impossible, as height could not be realistic.
Two mods are changing this however. The Cubic Chunks mod allows for unlimited height and depth, and the Terra 1-to-1 mod uses data from google maps to apply real world terrain and layout to a Minecraft world. A few weeks ago, YouTuber PippenFTS explored the map constructed with these mods, and he was impressed, but he noted that it was missing one massive element: anything man-made.
He discussed how he wanted to build his home town, and then put out a call for other players to join smaller regional versions of the map, build their hometowns, or famous cities, in order to ultimately merge them all together into one complete, and fully developed Earth. Fans and players flowed to the Discord chat used to delegate building tasks and assure that the very best builders were used for the task. Currently, the Discord has over 125,000 members, and many of these members are actually following through with Pippen’s idea.
In a follow up video, he explains that this is actually happening, Minecraft players are going to reconstruct the entire earth, and everything in and on it… perfectly to scale. He explains how they are choosing to ensure that the map is not distorted, and most importantly welcomes you to join him. This project will be truly amazing if and when is is completed, so if you like Minecraft, building, or just the Earth, feel free to join the project and apply to be builder in order to be a part of this massive project.