We all like to get out and about and explore the landscape and some of us use digital mapping products like RouteBuddy or OS Mapfinder to get to grip with areas that are new to us, but researchers at the Ordnance Survey have gone one better and developed a digital version of Britain in the wildly popular computer game Minecraft.

Intended as an educational aid and a demonstration of the power of OS OpenData products, the 224,000 square km, 22 billion block ‘world’ is something of an interesting aside; of the game’s 33 million players, there is an overwhelming contingent of boys aged 9-13 – a group that often require special tactics to garner their engagement and attention in the classroom.

Players, who need a registered copy of Minecraft to participate in the world, enter through a starting point at the Survey’s Southampton HQ, but can then make their way to any part of Great Britain using the standard Minecraft tools. Full details and installation instructions can be found at http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/innovate/developers/minecraft-map-britain.html For more detail of how the Minecraft world was builtt see: http://blog.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/2013/09/minecraft-creating-a-map-of-great-britain/#more-11456

Tags: Maps