What is the relation of GIS with Minecraft?
acs opened this issue · 10 comments
GIS provides the capability to relate previously unrelated information, through the use of location as the "key index variable".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_information_system
https://www.geoboxers.com/inspiration-geodata-in-minecraft/
https://spatiallyadjusted.com/2013/07/15/arcgis-for-minecraft/
https://spatiallyadjusted.com/2013/07/05/hangouts-with-james-fee-professional-minecraft-gis/
https://www.geoboxers.com/: Minecraft maps of the real world from GIS and geospatial data.
https://www.geoboxers.com/worldbloxer/
«WorldBloxer Minecraft maps are based on open data of the real world. To get your own map, you start by selecting a location on our map, choose between different design options, place your order and receive an e-mail with a download link. Use WorldBloxer maps as TEMPLATES for building your own version of the real world in Minecraft. Maps are 1 km x 1 km and built in 1 meter Minecraft blocks. Choose between WorldBloxer maps for the Minecraft Java edition or Minecraft: Education Edition / Bedrock.»
WorldBloxer Minecraft maps are based on open data (OpenStreetsMap?) of the real world. Yes, they use OpenStreetsMap: «We are constantly improving our WorldBloxer methods and algorithms, and with the crowd sourced work of thousands of volunteers the data in OpenStreetMap become increasingly accurate and up to date.»
So all this projects use OSM (OpenStreetsMap) to build the cities. And it ssems they use the position and the heights data to create the things! We have already a Thing that given a heights map, build the Thing: https://github.com/juntosdesdecasa/mcthings_extra/blob/develop/mcthings_extra/csv_points.py
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Altitude
«OSM currently records points with their latitude and longitude (x/y coordinates); elevations are recorded less frequently. Where this is done, the elevation in WGS84 is stored in the ele=* key. »
So sometimes OSM gives us the Altitude of the points. With this, we can build the maps.
And and Open Source project to convert GeoData to Minecraft implemented in ... Perl (my loved language some years algo):
https://github.com/cgutteridge/geocraft
And is experience doing it for his home land: https://www.southampton.ac.uk/~totl/newport/
So the first step, as Christopher did, is to use OSM to build a plain world. It has info about roads, rivers, buildings ... but only 2D. So we don't have in general heights. So it is a kind of 2D terraforming to start working in.
After that, Christopher was lucky and there was LiDAR data for its region. So he had heights data.
All of these is pretty similar with the Abadia3D effort we already did. In this case we had the heights map.
But in all cases, we don't have the data about the materials used in the buildings for example.
https://gisgeography.com/top-6-free-lidar-data-sources/ -> Heights maps!!! This could be cool :)
ftp://ftp.geo.euskadi.net/lidar/
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Which_EU_Countries_provide_free_access_to_LIDAR_data_files_in_2017
Spain: http://pnoa.ign.es/presentacion http://centrodedescargas.cnig.es/CentroDescargas/buscadorCatalogo.do?codFamilia=LIDAR
In OSM probably they are using already PNOA data: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/ES:Fuentes_de_datos_potenciales_de_Espa%C3%B1a
And a real use case of all of this: «“Denmark in Minecraft” is conceived and developed by the team behind GeoBoxers, but project and code is fully owned by the Danish Geodata Agency (Geodatastyrelsen). » Public Administrations.
So as a summary: real world could be recreated in Minecraft with different details depending on the data available for the region.
And the relation with McThings?
- Using LiDAR data and evolving the https://github.com/juntosdesdecasa/mcthings_extra/blob/develop/mcthings_extra/csv_points.py to read it, we can recreate 3D models of the world inside Minecraft. Probably we can name it LiDARThing
- We can have a OSMThing to draw regions of the world mapped in Open Street Maps in the Scenes also
With OSMThing + LiDARThing a nice first version of a city can be created. But the glory details ... it is hard to reflect them in Minecraft. And probably is where the opportunities will appear.
Take in care Minecraft Earth ... but it is an AR game. So probably no it our scope.
Time to stop this pretty interesting activity.