Switzerland rebuilt in Minecraft at 1:1 scale, one block per metre
Switzerland. Block by block. At 1:1 scale
A Minecraft Java 1.12.2 world built from swisstopo open geodata reproduces all 41,285 km² of Switzerland at one block per metre, from Lake Geneva to Val Müstair. Cubic Chunks lifts the game's height limit so the Dufourspitze reaches its true 4,634 metres. The full 24 GB package costs 15 CHF and is sold only to Swiss residents; the UNESCO Jungfrau-Aletsch area is free to download, and the creator asks buyers to test it first.
Every block is one metre, and mountains, lakes and valleys are exactly where they are. But the world is built by a program from open data, not by hand.
- amiga386
Denmark did this in 2014 and didn't need a pile of LLM puffery to do it:
https://geoboxers.com/denmark-in-minecraft/
> ‘Denmark in Minecraft’ was released in April 2014 by the Danish Geodata Agency. The project was conceived, developed and operated by Simon Lyngby Kokkendorff, Thorbjørn Kjærshøj Nielsen and Nynne Sole Dalå, the founders of GeoBoxers.
> The work was funded and carried out by the Danish Geodata Agency as an initiative following the 2013 “basic data programme”, where a significant amount of public Danish data were made available for free. The purpose was to make geographical and topographical data available through Minecraft, and help disseminate the free data to a broader audience and specifically reach children.
> Denmark in Minecraft was released with an invitation to teachers and schools to use the data in geography, math, science and history lessons, and within the first few months Minecraft-data were downloaded 300.000 times from the Geodata Agency, and around 37.000 unique users logged in to the agency’s Minecraft-servers.
> January 1st, 2016 the Danish Geodata Agency changed into the Agency for Data Supply and Efficiency, and links in English regarding “Denmark in Minecraft” were removed. Since 2020 Denmark in Minecraft can no longer be downloaded.
- petterroea
Recently I've gotten to a point where I am put off when a clearly vibe coded website asks for money.
I have seen too many examples of people trying to earn money on apps they clearly vibe coded in an hour. Why would I pay for that - might as well make it and sideload it myself. I might even publish it for free to the app store to spite them.
I really don't think you are in a position to be asking for money if you just made something using an LLM. You didn't put in much work yourself, and anyone could replicate it for the "low cost" of their LLM subscription.
- netsharc
This AI-written page seems to be typical of LLM: Sentences are 4 to 5 words long, and the reader have to fill in the details.
Did someone make 1x1x1 wooden cubes and remade Switzerland? Oh no, the tiny tiny text above the gigantic title says "Minecraft".
"Exactly as tall and as steep". How is a mountain that exists in a video game exactly as tall and steep as the real one?
Then there's an embedded map that is an attempt to convey information that I still can't figure out what.
How to run it? Aha, download Prism Launcher (not a clickable link), import the zip... and oh, you need to have purchased Minecraft too!
What an exercise in convolution...
- abricq
Nice ! I have a fun survival challenge: the swiss Via Alpina hike in Minecraft !
Quickly did the math. The real trail is ~390 km long, with 23,500 m of elevation gain and 14 Alpine passes. I found that Minecraft walking speed is 4.317 m/s (1 block = 1 m), so that's ~25 hours of continuous walking, or ~33 hours assuming 75% movement efficiency for terrain. That's one Alpine pass every ~2.4 hours, and a new hiking-stage destination every ~1h40!
- stormbringer_
Hi,
This is my first post although I have been following Hacker News for years.
I have been building something similar except not for Minecraft but hiking maps on mobile (Android). This is my app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chessvorte...
I combine OpenStreetMap data for routes, satellite data from Sentinel-2 and Copernicus DEM GLO-30 for heights, resolution is around 10m/pixel for image and 30m for heights - those are the highest resolution datasets I can legally redistribute, although I am also including what I call hi-res maps building for some countries (USA, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Romania) which has image resolution at 1.5m/pixel instead of 10m.
I could have used higher resolution for hi-res maps, data is available at precision like 30-50cm/pixel but this being a mobile app I needed to consider storage for a map on mobile, at hi-res a 10x10 km squared area takes around 25MB.
The idea for this came from my own hiking trips, in many mountains there is not so good internet connection, so I can build an offline map beforehand and in terrain I can use this to see where I am in 3D - and just use the phone GPS for location, no data needed.
For building the map packages I have setup a linux server that combines all 3 data sources (OpenStreetMap, Sentinel-2, Copernicus GLO-30) so once an area is chosen it can build it in like 1-3 minutes. Since all OSM endpoints are giving lots of timeouts I setup a local OSM mirror with the data that I need - […]
- evrimoztamur
It's not the most pleasant that you get the constructed buildings embedded into the map as crappy voxel approximations. Would be sweeter to have the terrain only. Also, total LLM goop.
- Pirut
I’ve actually been building the same thing except with the whole world.
- BSDobelix
Wait is that not a 1 to 1 derived work from the official "swisstopo open geodata", taking 15.- is for sure not "fair use"
>>Obtaining and using the data and services is free-of-charge, subject to the provisions on fair use.
https://www.geo.admin.ch/en/general-terms-of-use-fsdi#2.-Dat...
Am i wrong here?