Ordnance Survey upscale Minecraft map of Great Britain to be “more realistic”

83 million block Britain in Minecraft.

The Ordnance Survey have updated their already-massive official Minecraft map of Great Britain to include rail links, trees and local roads.

The British mapping agency have doubled the map’s scale – and believe it’s now detailed enough for players to find the location of their own houses in it.

The original map was built by OS intern Joseph Braybrook last year, and reduced 86,000 square miles of Britain to 22 billion blocks. Now a full-time employee of the agency, Braybrook has scaled up his map to a total of 83 billion blocks – each one representing 25 metres.

The map covers mainland Great Britain and its surrounding islands – but not Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man, which are mapped by other organisations.

The new scale means local roads, railways and tributaries to rivers are now visible. Woods and forests are handled by Minecraft’s tree generation, and Braybrook hopes that players will build working rail systems in-game.

“I’ve attempted to re-create Great Britain to be more realistic, while maintaining the gameplay elements people love from the game,” he told the BBC.

The one-gigabyte map will be made available to download on the OS site, alongside an interactive coordinate tool to help players to find their own homes. More than 100,000 players have downloaded the original Minecraft Great Britain to date.

It’s not clear whether this new map will be compatible with the rock data of the British Geological Survey, used to accurately recreate strata in the original.

Do you think you’ll try and find your own place in Minecraft? Maybe even build it on the correct spot?