The UK's national mapping agency, Ordnance Survey (OS), has released an upgraded Minecraft map of Great Britain, adding detailed buildings, trees, rivers and roads to the digital overview.
The first version of the UK Minecraft map was created at the mapping organisation by intern Joseph Braybrook, that was around this time last year. It reproduced 224,000sq km of Britain, using over 22 billion blocks. That original UK Minecraft map was created in two weeks and has seen over 100,000 downloads over the last year.
Now holding a full-time position, Braybrook made the decision to add the extra features to the map, where the updated version uses 83 billion blocks with each block representing 25m of real-world British land, water or road. The updates are said to be so detailed that gamers will be able to find their own roads and houses.
"This has really opened up the Ordnance Survey brand to a whole new audience, the younger generation, the gaming generation," OS head of communications Robert Andrews told Marketing. "People know us for paper maps that you use walking on the hills and valleys."
Minecraft was first released in 2011 and has been hugely popular with 33 million gamers worldwide. The OS brand's popularity has been boosted by the game, especially with the younger generation who refers to OS as "cool and innovative", said to be "relatively new words" to describe the organisation.
The leaving of Liverpool
The OS will be making an interactive version of the map available from its website so users can locate their own homes. This new 1GB map, like last year's original, will be offered to Minecraft users to download free-of-charge.
"I've attempted to re-create Great Britain to be more realistic, while maintaining the gameplay elements people love from the game," Braybrook told the BBC. The map is thought to be the biggest Minecraft map in existence which is based on real-world geographical data. While you wait to download you can take a ramble through Snowdonia in the video below.
