Danish government builds Minecraft world of Denmark from geodata | Hacker News Reader

Danish government builds Minecraft world of Denmark from geodata

gst.dk

134 pointstudborg76 comments

Translation:

    The Geodata Agency's data is now free, and we have inserted them into Minecraft.
    
    That means that the whole of Denmark proper is now available as a virtual world
    in 1:1 in Minecraft itself, so you can freely move around in Denmark, find
    our own neighbourhood, construct and deconstruct like in any other Minecraft world.
    
    On this page, you can read more about the free data in the Minecraft world, and
    how you get started playing or download the free data.

According to this page[0] the map is divided into three regions, each which has their own server:

  * Northern Jutland: server1.gstcraft.dk
  * Southwestern Denmark: server2.gstcraft.dk
  * Eastern Denmark: server3.gstcraft.dk

[0] http://www.gst.dk/emner/frie-data/minecraft/spil-her/

The OSGB in the UK did something similar last year: http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/innovate/developers/minecraf...

Apparently it was built by an intern, it took him two weeks to create the 22 Billion blocks: http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/about/news/2013/minecraft-ma...

Is it 1:1? It doesn't appear 1:1, given how tiny the A/B-roads are. I am just curious, there are not a lot of screenshots (or information on the scale in fact).

> Each blocks represents a ground area of 50 square metres. The raw height data is stored in metres and must be scaled down to fit within the 256 block height limit in Minecraft. A maximum height of 2 500 metres was chosen, which means Ben Nevis, appears just over 128 blocks high. Although this exaggerates the real-world height, it preserves low-lying coastal features such as Bournemouth's cliffs, adding interest to the landscape.

It seems to be a 1:50 scale.

Fortunately for the makers of the Danish version, the highest point in Denmark is a hill 171 meters high, so this particular problem didn't arise.

> The raw height data is stored in metres and must be scaled down to fit within the 256 block height limit in Minecraft.

Well, I'm a cheapskate I play Minetest, not Minecraft. I'm fairly certain that Minetest has a larger height limit, but it can freeze like a bastard. The other day I went for a dig, and I used the compass to work out my position. I was over 500 blocks under the surface, I kept running into lava flows(!).

I'm now curious enough about Minetest after viewing its website that I might want to contribute. I love Minecraft and have played it since alpha, but it's always bothered me that it's built in Java - and that it runs horribly slow once Feed the Beast comes into play.

Not that Java doesn't have overhead, but quite a bit of the slow down for minecraft servers is caused by bad algorithms (N^2 type stuff) and data structures.

> I love Minecraft and have played it since alpha, but it's always bothered me that it's built in Java - and that it runs horribly slow once Feed the Beast comes into play.

I have never played Minecraft, so I can't comment, but Minetest does slow, it has a lot on its plate.

I just signed up with flickr, look for user "mrtucker257". I've uploaded some photos of my upmarket real estate.

Here is a link to NAFV_P's album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/123873955@N07/

Thanks for that, it was my first time on flickr.

This problem is what finally pushed me away from the game once and for all after a couple years. Minecraft itself is pretty heavy and slow given enough player load (sometimes not even that.. forest fires, lava flows and such can also bog everything down) - mods exacerbate the problem to the point of unplayability.

Which is really too bad, because things like Feed The Beast add an insane level of extra functionality and downright awesome things to the world.

Somehow I think it would be a different game if not for Java overhead. I've spent a truly ludicrous amount of time tweaking heap sizes, obscure garbage collection flags and such trying to keep the blasted thing from consuming all of the memory and crashing (and therefore corrupting the state of the world) on a relatively low-popularity server.

I have to say that I am quite impressed by their work. I spent 30 minutes earlier, walking around in the neighborhood where I grew up, and it was extremely easy to navigate and recognize roads, houses, and large buildings.

Even the train tracks through the city were there as rails in Minecraft (although not fully connected and working).

Very cool, the guys at GST did some amazing work here.. But as far as I can tell, there is no way to download the full 1TB world?

I've long been surprised that real-world places weren't modelled more often in minecraft (and fps games).

My tentative conclusion was it might be too helpful for e.g. actual shooting. Though, height data is generally available anyway (e.g. google maps' "terrain", council planning databases), just not as easy to work with.

I think it's more likely to be a design decision. If you try to model a large real world area, some people will immediately notice how it is unlike reality; so the constraints of computational power, design skill, and developer ability are multiplied. The differences can be truly jarring.

My guess is that there is more upside to creating unique areas. This affords more creative freedom and the luxury of changing the simulation in accordance with constraints and resources.

We tried this in ActionQuake 2 thinking it was a great idea. When we were halfway done with our town we realized it was very boring to play in something realistic. The real world doesn't always present such an interesting landscape for FPS shooters compared to the ones that are designed to be fun to play.

Even if this is a minor "show-off" project, it's a good reminder for the power of open data. Location services, emergency planning software, tons of other stuff benefit enormously from this kind of openness.

[Crazy fun idea]:Basically, given Denmark's open geographic data one could potentially build an MMORPG which takes place in Denmark and have the terrain pre-generated. I think I would call this one Hamlet: The revenge.

Wouldn't Hamlet: The Revenge just be Hamlet? :P Imagine a Hamlet roleplay server

I'm wondering how they did it? Is there some kind of converter to transform GEO data to Minecraft Worlds?

GST itself has a very detailed explanation in Danish.[0] But basically, two of their employees worked to created the converter. They even include a table list of GST's own descriptions of terrain types and what Minecraft biomes they were converted to.

They don't have underground data, so some simple steps have been taken for each area based on a general idea of the underground (e.g. Bornholm's underground becoming stone).

As for buildings, they know the shape of buildings, but not their texture, so they are merely randomly generated in 'unrealistic colours' (as they describe it).

As the map data is updated each quarter (3 months), the Minecraft data will also be updated.

It's a very interesting read, I recommend you learn Danish and read it!

[0] http://www.gst.dk/emner/frie-data/minecraft/om-frie-data-i-e...

Or just use Google Translate: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=da&tl=en&js=y&prev=...

Didn't Mojang already do this? http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Superflat

On the Denmark minecraft server someone has placed nazi insignia all over Amalienborg (Warp there to see).. I think the server admins should have made it impossible to break and place blocks...

There is a "the" Denmark Minecraft server? It looks like the map data is just being provided. Is there an official server hosting a live game?

Eastern Denmark: server3.gstcraft.dk

If they included Hans Island in this, any canadians are obliged to go there, build an inukshuk and leave a bottle of canadian whiskey for our Danish friends - i mean enemies! ;) - who happen by. see also : http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4797368

I'd love it if we could get things like this for the moon, or Mars, or deep sea Earth.

And I'd really like 3D printed toy models of Mars or Moon too - I haven't found anything that does this.

What, like this? https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:26311

Somehow event at 10X/50X exaggerated height I don't find these particularly interesting. Planets, even Mars, are for the most part really smooth.

A somewhat exaggerated model of the Matterhorn was one of the first things I printed and it's pretty cool, though.

Not Minecraft per se, but close: http://www.voxelmars.com/

building whole cities and landscapes by putting together small bricks piece by piece? would be surprised if they were not all over it in DK, the land of lego.

Is there a way to download the maps rather then connect to the servers? I keep poking around but it's not jumping out at me..

ominous answered this but was marked as dead. Not clear why, but my best guess is that people use Google Translate to bypass spam filtering?

Here's the link he posted. I'm leaving out the google translate link: http://gst.dk/emner/frie-data/minecraft/download-data/

It was almost certainly the link shortener that got ominous's post autokilled by HN code. Here's the translate link: https://translate.google.pt/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pre...

I never really got into minecraft, do people just mine and build things or do you actually have a story/things to complete?

There is no story but I enjoy the adventure mode. It's a totally different game but we can compare it to and Sims game, any other simulator or the more recent Dayz. It doesn't have a story but it's enjoyable to play. You need to survive the night, create a shelter, get stronger by obtaining rare block, build a nice house etc....

> There is no story but I enjoy the adventure mode.

Well depends how you look at it... it doesn't have a narrated, scripted storyline but it most definitely has a kind of an open ended story these days. It was added gradually over the years so every update was a bit more to explore.

<SPOILERS> It is quite epic, really... you have to journey to the center of the earth, then descend into hell and finally ascend into the heavens. </SPOILERS>

Nothing forces you to do so, though. You can spend your time farming cows if that's your thing.

just yesterday I was searching for publicly available administrative geodata of European countries. it's not an easy task due to language barriers and fragmentation. Does anyone know where to download the source data of this project?

Download here http://download.kortforsyningen.dk/

Instructions here http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=da&tl=en&js=y&prev=...

Edit: You need a user to be able to download from Kortforsyningen. Not sure what the user agreements says about foreigners because the sign up form is in danish and the options are like if you are a danish city, citizen, ngo etc. What I can see you only need to supply user name and email address.

What surprises me is that I can't find any pages in English. So good luck navigating if you don't understand danish.

> What surprises me is that I can't find any pages in English. So good luck navigating if you don't understand danish.

The American expat community hasn't grown large enough to form an effective separatist group and demand that the Danish government translate everything into English? How awful. /s

The Danish government does translate a pretty large amount of stuff to English, not specifically for Americans but because it's the lingua franca used to interact with anyone non-Danish, even fairly nearby people like Finns and Germans (Finns are officially supposed to know some Swedish, which is similar to Danish, but in practice English is used even for intra-Nordic communication). Not everything is translated, but it's sort of trending in that direction. I would guess most "scientific" type stuff, like this data, will eventually join that group.

On the other hand Google Translate tends to work pretty well with Danish anyway, because sentences are fairly short without complicated German-style clause structures that confuse the translator, and the grammar is not too different from English.

Here is the Swedish equivalent. Seven languages supported.

https://www.lantmateriet.se/

The GADM database of Global Administrative Areas has boundaries for every country, in a variety of formats. They're normalized into 4 "layers" IIRC. You can push them straight into postgis or whatever.

http://www.gadm.org/

(Oops, I just realised you're looking for full maps with elevation at each point, and this is just a bunch of polygons. Still a very useful resource.)

What a waste of tax payer money.

The intent of this data release is to help children explore Denmark in a virtual environment in class. This is to help Danish children at least to better grasp Danish geography.

Isn't that what Google Earth is for as an example?

Putting it in Minecraft is a hack and a PR thing, nothing more.

Yes, it is PR. Read the FAQ

http://gst.dk/emner/frie-data/minecraft/ofte-stillede-spoerg...

Hvorfor lukker serveren den 23. oktober 2014?

’Danmarks frie geodata i en Minecraftverden’ er et demonstrationsprojekt, hvor Geodatastyrelsen vil vise de mangfoldige muligheder i brugen af geodata. Derfor er serveren kun midlertidig. Der vil fortsat være mulighed for at downloade mindre bidder af Danmark på Kortforsyningen efter denne dato.

It is a demonstration project to show the possibilities of geodata. The minecraft server closes 23 of October 2014.

I won't presume that their arguments are completely air tight in regards to its educational usage. But I'd argue that exploring Denmark from a more close up view (than a map) is more appealing to school children. Google's Street View can only go so far.

There is nothing wrong with the intention, the problem is result. I hope I'm wrong, but on my experience of these kind of things is that the popularity is short lived. Soon, some new idea comes along and removes the just implemented old new way.

How about a school trip instead?

So using already acquired data and a system to put that data into a game world is a worse use of money than your idea of what.. taking every school child in the country of a tour of the entire country?

Much better. The minecraft world cant replace the real world.

The argument to use this for education is shown already to be false because the minecraft server closes this fall.

The minecraft world cant replace the real world.

Neither can maps, should we stop making them? What a ridiculous argument.

Yes, if the maps only worked until 23 of October 2014.

Then, if the server was left running, you'd be OK with it, right?

Besides, only their server stops working, you can still download the data and run your own for as long as you'd like: http://gst.dk/emner/frie-data/minecraft/download-data/

Still no. I do silly replies when people assume too much instead of asking first. I todays society people just making up other peoples arguments to fit their agenda.

What a useful bit of soft power. Denmark is being talked about on an influential Internet forum. People on HN usually complain about how bad governments are at makig data open. Here is an example of a government making data open and doing fun silly things with it.

The cost ofthe project is probably minimal compared to other government spending and has had a reasonable impact.

The children using this Mincraft world will grow up to do other neat things.

That is exactly the same argument that was made when Sweden made a virtual embassy in Second Life. Not convinced that it benefited anyone except the programmers.

And also, I'm not making an argument against open data.

I think the amount of taxpayer money spent on this is negligible in the scheme of things, and far cheaper than an ARCGIS license for every child in the country to explore virtual geodata with instead.

As the link is down, did it cover how much taxpayers' money was spent producing it?

I came here to write this but am quite surprised that other people don't agree with it and downvoted you. These agencies aren't paid from our tax money to produce toys - they are there to provide a cost efficient service where possible.

I have the same worries about the entire gov.uk rework.

Neat hack yes, but this is government, not private enterprise or personal time.

In the UK we almost called for the hanging of an MP who bought a duck house on expenses and I'm sure these "neat hacks" over time have cost a lot more.

In your other comment you call this a ’hack and a PR thing’ and it is exactly that: a neat hack to draw attention to the fact that the government is now publishing this data-set as free data.

I think it’s great the government publishes this free data (given as it is was probably collected using tax money), and I also think it’s great they do a project to attract attention to this: the more people know about this data, the more people can use it, and the better the tax money has been spent.

Plus, I imagine the Danish blog post provides good starting points for anyone wishing to use this data in similar ways.

If you go down the "government should be cost efficient" route, you end up with things like [/PPI/] which, whilst making the government more cost efficient, has thoroughly damaged many vital UK services.

Edit: By PPI, I meant PPP/PFI. I conflated the two into one incorrect abbreviation. Apologies.

Indeed, I can imagine if every small bit of work had to have a full analysis of ROI etc. then the whole bureaucracy intended to prevent the wasting of money would end us costing far more than could ever be saved.

If the Ordnance Survey want to do even more cool stuff with a tiny bit of my taxpayers money then they have my blessing.

What are you talking about? PPI was a private-industry thing. PPP is regarded as a failure partly because it damaged service provision but mostly because it didn't actually save money.

You're right - I've conflated PPP and PFI in my brain there. Apologies.

That's total horse shit.

PPP was not about government efficiency not has it improved efficiency. PPP was about trading a short immediate cost (infrastructure build) against a long one (rent). It was a cash flow measure to knock as much deficit on the head up front and reduce unemployment. This was purely a political measure for the government to "not look as shit".

Of course in the long term it's a shitty deal for citizens, lots of political cash back-handers were taken and we've now got long-term rents to pay and stuck with low grade contract outfits.

But that's what happens when you put capitalism and socialism in the same pot and stir it.

If it's reduced governmental cash outlay in the short term, is that not more "cost efficient"?

Because we're throwing a pile of cash away on fighting foreign wars we can't win and killing people rather than abolishing PPP and concentrating on looking after all the sick people at home.

I'm pretty sure that paying an intern or two for a few weeks to produce tangible results is well down on the "unnecessary government spending" ladder.

Interns doesn't mean free labour in Europe unlike the US. If every department has one, it's got a significant cost.

A significant cost for who? How many employees does the Danish government have?

In the working age of 18-64, 27% of the population works under the Danish government.

Not free but cheap(er) than a regular worker.

I usually get down voted here, so no surprise.

Sweden made a virtual embassy in Second Life. It's closed now. Just money down the drain.

http://secondhouseofsweden.com/

Politicians have really hard time these days to put tax payer money where they should go, education, health care, law enforcement.

My point entirely!

So tax money shouldn't fund fire departments?

Who are you asking?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com