earthcraft

The Earth in Minecraft, one block per metre. Earthcraft rebuilds real places from public elevation, LiDAR and map data. It starts with Chicago. Today the world covers about 2,600 km² of the Chicago area, and it grows from there.

Explore it in your browser: ericspencer.us/earthcraft

Source code: github.com/EricSpencer00/earthcraft

Play it

You need Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.10. The whole world is about 42 GB.

hf download EricSpencer00/earthcraft --repo-type dataset --include "world/*" --local-dir earthcraft
mkdir -p Earthcraft/region Earthcraft/entities
cp -R earthcraft/world/meta/. Earthcraft/
find earthcraft/world/region -name '*.mca' -exec mv {} Earthcraft/region/ \;
find earthcraft/world/entities -name '*.mca' -exec mv {} Earthcraft/entities/ \;

Move the Earthcraft folder into your Minecraft saves folder and open it. You start at the Chicago Water Tower. Distant Horizons is recommended for long views.

What's here

Places that aren't listed haven't been built yet. They aren't empty land.

Use the data

Every file can be read over HTTP, and region files support range requests, so you can read a single chunk without downloading its whole region:

1. Find the region in world/index/regions.json.
2. Read bytes 0–8191 of world/region/<floor(X/16)>/r.X.Z.mca. That's the chunk table.
3. Read the chunk's sectors. Each holds a 4-byte length, a compression byte (2 = zlib), then the chunk data.

For a stable reference, pin a commit: fetch catalog.json at that commit and every path at the same commit.

How it's made

• Ground: USGS 3D Elevation Program elevation and LiDAR.
• Buildings: LiDAR roofs on OpenStreetMap, Overture and county building outlines.
• Detail: trees from LiDAR, and streets, sidewalks, crossings and street furniture from OpenStreetMap and city open data.
• Ground colour: NAIP aerial imagery and ESA WorldCover land cover.
• Next: building colours and windows from open street-level photos (Mapillary, Panoramax).

Everything is generated by code and uploaded here automatically. No player data is published.

Credits and licences

• Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. Because the world is built from it, the world data is shared under ODbL 1.0.
• USGS 3DEP LiDAR (including Merrick-Surdex 2022 Mid-North Illinois), U.S. public domain.
• Overture Maps Foundation buildings (ODbL 1.0); Cook County GIS building footprints.
• USDA NAIP imagery (public domain); ESA WorldCover 2021 (CC BY 4.0).
• The Water Tower texture in world/meta/resources.zip is adapted from "Chicago Water Tower view from west" by Dough4872, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
• Earthcraft's code is Apache 2.0.

Older files in releases/ carry their own attribution notes.

NOT AN OFFICIAL MINECRAFT PRODUCT. NOT APPROVED BY OR ASSOCIATED WITH MOJANG OR MICROSOFT.