back to article Minecraft players can now download Denmark – all of it – in 1:1 scale

Players of the popular sandbox world Minecraft have a new landscape to roam over, as the Danish government put a representation of the entire country in 1:1 scale online for download. Denmark Minecraft map The Nyhavn district of Copenhagen in Minecraft mode "All of Denmark is now a virtual world in the ratio 1:1 inside the …

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  1. Eguro
    Mushroom

    This is great!

    Didn't the UK get something similar a few (I want to say) months back?

    I think it's great so long as the process isn't reversed, I really don't want to s... *HISSSS* OH crap!

    1. Jim 59

      Memory test

      Who remembers the Cambridge University Doom wad ?

    2. AdamT

      Re: This is great!

      yes it did: http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=minecraft+britain

    3. G2
      Black Helicopters

      Re: This is great!

      anyone remembers when the same thing was done on a much smaller scale in CounterStrike a few years back?

      http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/03/student_counterstrike_map_texasschool/

      i wonder if / when will someone call the cops or a swat team down on these... or maybe just dispense with the niceties and use a drone strike directly

    4. asdf
      Trollface

      Re: This is great!

      Check out Randy the Robot's minecraft videos on YouTube. That is how you play Minecraft.

  2. Michael Habel

    Needs more Norway

    With its lovely crinkly edges I hear the Designer also got an Award for it.

    1. Frumious Bandersnatch

      Re: Needs more Norway

      That was also my first thought (so I'm not the only one pining for the fjords). Then I thought, why not do the Benelux countries? It's sure to come in at much less than a Terabyte, being so boring and all (geographically speaking, of course).

      1. Michael Habel

        Re: Needs more Norway

        That was also my first thought (so I'm not the only one pining for the fjords). Then I thought, why not do the Benelux countries? It's sure to come in at much less than a Terabyte, being so boring and all (geographically speaking, of course).

        Wait the Benelux Countries did you say? Isn't that where the Country with the most offensive name in the entire Galaxy is located? I shall refrain from speaking it so as to not upset all the turlingdromes out there.

        1. Tel

          Re: Needs more Norway

          What? Belgium?

  3. IT Drone

    Siphonaptera

    "All of Denmark is now a virtual world in the ratio 1:1 inside"

    ... including Miniland, the scale model Lego world at Legoland, Billund?

    1. Lunatik
      Unhappy

      Re: Siphonaptera

      Yeah, but rendered at a super-realistic 1m resolution unfortunately.

  4. Katie Saucey
    Joke

    Brb, I'll do Canada

    All 202 080km of it. See you guys in 2050.

    1. Katie Saucey

      Re: Brb, I'll do Canada

      Oops, forgot to say 202 080km of coastline, obviously I'll outsource The Rockies!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Brb, I'll do Canada

        My dad digitized the US (mainland) coastline in 1983 for a client. I think it took him two weeks to enter the data (x,y) and I remember it took the computer almost a minute to render the data...

        1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: Brb, I'll do Canada

          My dad digitized the US (mainland) coastline in 1983 for a client.

          So that's what happened. I was living on the US coast in '83 and I thought it looked awfully discrete.

  5. Baudwalk
    Paris Hilton

    Baltic?

    Even Paris is confused.

    1. southpacificpom
      Holmes

      Re: Baltic?

      Well Paris is blonde and that's not really surprising to be honest.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Baltic?

        The Danish people must be as surprised as Paris Hilton.

  6. h4rm0ny

    Wait! The GOVERNMENT did this?

    I want to know why and what part? Do they have a Ministry for Computer Games over there? Is this the output of their Culture department? Did their Prime Minister just directly appoint someone to do this because she thought it would be fun?

    I'm trying to imagine Cameron announcing a special House of Commons edition for GTA or similar. It just doesn't click.

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Wait! The GOVERNMENT did this?

      It might happen in the UK, but the papers would be seething about how much "taxpayers' money" was spent on it, and how many disabled toilets that could have been spent on (they have their own bespoke units of measurement just like El Reg does).

      1. AdamT

        Re: Wait! The GOVERNMENT did this?

        It _did_ happen in the UK: http://search.theregister.co.uk/?q=minecraft+britain

        Don't recall that there was too much seething, given that an intern at Ordnance Survey did it.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wait! The GOVERNMENT did this?

      "I want to know why...."

      That's easy, madam (1).

      Look at any table of either tax take or government spending as a proportion of GDP. Whichever way you cut it, Denmark always comes out top, exempting a handful of basket case countries like East Timor and Cuba.

      When your government is spending almost 60% of GDP, and has done so for years, then it soon runs out of useful things to spend money on, but you can be sure as eggs is eggs that it isn't going to decide that maybe the citizens should be allowed to keep more of their money to spend as they see fit. And spending 60% of GDP in a wealthy country must be a real challenge when you don't have a huge military-tech-government combine and an interventionist foreign policy. Interestingly the French are only marginally behind Denmark in terms of economic socialism, and as far as I can see they've given the world nothing, so I presume that all the money in France is spent on mistresses and such like.

      Note 1. Madam - or sir, or whatever may be appropriate for your gender and species. This is a general problem for most of us Pseudonymists. Speaking for myself I'm an ursine male, and it isn't just the woods I s*** up.

      1. JDX Gold badge

        Re: When your government is spending almost 60% of GDP

        When your government is spending almost 60% of GDP, and has done so for years, then it soon runs out of useful things to spend money on, but you can be sure as eggs is eggs that it isn't going to decide that maybe the citizens should be allowed to keep more of their money to spend as they see fit

        Or as a counter-argument, when your government is spending 60% of GDP, you'd expect their remit to extend far beyond traditional "government services", into research and stuff normally done by private enterprise.

  7. h4rm0ny
    WTF?

    1:1 ???

    See title. Seriously?

    1. ratfox

      Re: 1:1 ???

      Same question on my mind. I didn't know Minecraft bricks had an official size. What's the length of an edge in linguine?

      1. Hellcat

        Re: 1:1 ???

        Not an official size, but considered to be 1m^3.

        http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Units_of_measure

    2. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      Re: 1:1 ???

      Actually what happened is this. When they first saved the file, after typing it all in, it had some typos. The Scale parameter in the header of the file had an unintended uppercase M ("Mm") that was naturally interpreted as MEGA-meter. But all the data was entered in millimeter ("mm"). So it was not in 1:1 scale, but ONE BEEEEEEELEEEEON-to -one scale. Isn't that amazing? It took them only a few seconds to correct the case of the prefix ("mm"), and click Save.

      /Sarcasm off

      (Well spotted. Those 3 or more that downvoted your observation can hang their heads in shame.)

      1. h4rm0ny

        Re: 1:1 ???

        >>"(Well spotted. Those 3 or more that downvoted your observation can hang their heads in shame.)"

        It's up to five now. All for querying what 1:1 scale means in a virtual world on a computer screen!

  8. MacroRodent
    Headmaster

    Baltic?

    I have always understood the term "Baltic country" to refer only to Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. Besides, Denmark has coastline both on the Baltic and the Atlantic. "Nordic country" would be a more appropriate term.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Baltic?

      "I have always understood the term "Baltic country" to refer only to Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia."

      I've never heard that usage. I've only seen "Baltic States" refer to those three; "Baltic country" is a more generic term and seems fine to me.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Baltic?

        As a Dane, I was somewhat baffled as well.

        I'd say only Bornholm and perhaps some eastern parts of our most eastern parts (besides Bornholm) are actually in anyway connected to the Baltic Sea.

        We're far more connected to Kattegat, Skagerrak and the North Sea (aka part of the Atlantic) - Historically so as well.

        I guess you could say that it's technically true, but it would take a least 5 guesses to get from "Name a Baltic Country" to "Denmark" - and that's after a few: "But there aren't others than those 3..."

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    In case you can't find the download...

    First of all; I am a big fan of Minecraft myself so yeah; I really look forward to digging into Denmark a little upcoming weekend.

    But the thing is; when I started digging for this download (being Dutch I can make out bits and pieces of the Danish language, but not that much) I eventually came across this kortforsyningen download page. As said; my Danish isn't too great, but looking at the pictures it seems to me as if Denmark has "simply" enhanced an already available download service.

    What I make from it is that you can download several maps from Denmark in several different formats / resolutions. And in addition you can now also download the Minecraft "map".

    So far the good news, the bad news is that it seems as if the download doesn't actually get you to a link which you can click. But I could of course also have missed the obvious.

    1. KjetilS

      Re: In case you can't find the download...

      I am a native speaker of Norwegian, so Danish isn't too difficult for me.

      I had a browse, and ended up here: http://gst.dk/emner/frie-data/minecraft/spil-her/

      It seems like you need to use their servers if you want to browse the entire areas.

      The link you found does allow you to download minecraft maps of Denmark, but only 10x10km chunks, not the whole thing. I wasn't able to find a "complete" download.

      "Vi henviser derfor til Kortforsyningen , hvor det er muligt at downloade 10x10 km blokke til egen computer, og så gå på opdagelse der. "

      Which roughly translates to "We wish to point to the Map Service (Link), where it is possible to download 10x10 km blocks to your own computer, (...)"

  10. John Tserkezis

    1TB over the next 7 months equates to about 150Gb per month. On top of your usual monthly downloads, there isn't an internet plan around that will cater for that.

    Oh, I'm sorry, it's Denmark. That makes much more sense than any pissweak Australian ISP who don't even have the courtesy of asking you to bend over before they insert their boot.

    1. Rabbit80

      I feel sorry for everyone with caps.. I downloaded over 900GB last weekend alone (after formatting my computer - I re-downloaded my entire steam library!)

      1. NogginTheNog
        Flame

        Waving bye-bye to the word "again"

        "I re-downloaded my entire steam library"

        It's downloaded AGAIN.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Waving bye-bye to the word "again"

          > It's downloaded AGAIN.

          A third time?

    2. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      I'll assume you mean 150GB.

      FTTH = less than two hours (assuming the rest of the path can keep up). Our ISP explicitly states unlimited, no cap. In this case I believe that they actually intend it as written.

  11. Mystic Megabyte
    Happy

    Freetown Christiania

    Can you still mine for hashish there?

  12. M7S

    Is there a little Sandy Toksvig?

    Just to illustrate their export capability

    1. Vince Lewis 1

      Re: Is there a little Sandy Toksvig?

      Now you mention it she does look a little like a minecraft avatar.

  13. Andy Kay

    As a 29 year old who doesn't quite 'get' MC...

    Maybe I'm too old to understand but will they be improving the resolution of the game any time soon?

    1. Van

      Re: As a 29 year old who doesn't quite 'get' MC...

      No you're too young. The low res was actually part of the charm for the 'older than you' people who took up the game.

      Like Facebook, Minecraft was hijacked by the kids.

    2. DaveyG

      Re: As a 29 year old who doesn't quite 'get' MC...

      Good use of tax payers money, glad I don't pay taxes there.

      1. Vince Lewis 1

        Re: As a 29 year old who doesn't quite 'get' MC...

        It erks me when people complain that things like this are a waste of tax payers money.

        The same happened when downing street retorted to Jeremy Clarkson for PM.

        The cost of these little PR stunts are so far bellow minimal is laughable to complain. More Money is wasted from bad policies that have to be backtracked and redone.

        1. YetAnotherLocksmith Silver badge

          Re: As a 29 year old who doesn't quite 'get' MC...

          Absolutely agree.

          Even if the Danish taxpayer paid a hundred thousand to a developer for this, that's a small company (hopefully) who will stay in business for another year to grow their economy. Meanwhile they get some great PR out to the world, & the goodwill generated makes the world a generally better place.

          Being able to remodel the skyline of London would be cool. Could knock down that gherkin now they've gone bust, & see if it is an improvement or not. For nearly free!

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: As a 29 year old who doesn't quite 'get' MC...

            "Even if the Danish taxpayer paid a hundred thousand to a developer for this, that's a small company (hopefully) who will stay in business for another year to grow their economy."

            That's a good model. Maybe we should try it. Government could pick winners, and hand them public money to do things that they wouldn't be able to do commercially, and the whole economy will be richer as a result.

            1. tangerine Sedge

              Re: As a 29 year old who doesn't quite 'get' MC...

              To be honest, if your map data contains height data (as it should), then it's a fairly trivial piece of software to convert the map data to Minecraft data. It might take a few days to generate (depending on hardware used), but hosting the data is probably the most complex part of this.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: As a 29 year old who doesn't quite 'get' MC...

          "More Money is wasted from bad policies that have to be backtracked and redone."

          Rubbish. Bad policies are never backtracked or redone.

      2. Michael Habel

        Re: As a 29 year old who doesn't quite 'get' MC...

        I'd rather pay for this, then some fake ass research into Farting Cows blowing up the Ozone Layer, thus causing an otherwise non-existant Global Warming to happen. The Snow outside would happen to suggest otherwise. Thankfully its gone now. But this last Winter was anything but, warm!

        1. h4rm0ny
          Facepalm

          Re: As a 29 year old who doesn't quite 'get' MC...

          >>"thus causing an otherwise non-existant Global Warming to happen. The Snow outside would happen to suggest otherwise. Thankfully its gone now. But this last Winter was anything but, warm!"

          Speaking as a AGW-skeptic, please don't ever support me in an argument. Your confusion between weather and climate would shame anyone and your ignorance that the real debate is not over if global temperatures have been rising (they have), but whether the primary cause is human activity and the degree that Carbon is it.

          Some people believe whole-heartedly in AGW and runaway climate change. Others of us are varying degrees of skeptical. Then there are just idiots.

    3. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: "will they be improving the resolution of the game"

      I don't think they can, technically speaking.

      We have games today that boast about how the terrain can be modified, but they lie. They look gorgeous, but the terrain "modifications" are small and temporary.

      In Minecraft, every part of the world is a modifiable entity. It doesn't look so good, but technically it goes way beyond just having a hole in the ground.

      The tradeoff is clear : you use memory for gorgeous graphics, or for actual functionality. Minecraft has decided to go for functionality.

      That being said, you can easily find Minecraft mods that propose texture packs. Some of them make the game look quite better than the original textures. Still just as blocky, obviously, but the blocks look nice.

      1. Dodel

        Re: "will they be improving the resolution of the game"

        Check out 7 Days to Die, it's Minecraft with Zombies, but Voxel based.

        1. sisk

          Re: "will they be improving the resolution of the game"

          it's Minecraft with Zombies

          Erm, surely you mean it's Minecraft with JUST Zombies. Though from what I've heard the zombies of 7 Days are far deadlier than the ones in Minecraft. And from what I've seen the graphics are FAR better.

    4. stucs201

      Re: "will they be improving the resolution of the game"

      Which resolution?

      The screen resolution? Thats already as high as any other game.

      The texture resolution? The game already supports replacement texture packs, which can be significantly higher resolution than the default textures. These can actually look very nice (particularly combined with a shader mod), but the blockyness of the default textures feels like a better fit for size of the blocks.

      The size of the blocks? No, this is unlikely to change, the current size is a good compromise between having enough detail to tell whats going on and not having to place too many blocks to build something in a reasonable time.

      The polygon count of models for blocks and other entities? Possibly, I think they're working on making models replacable (like textures already are) in a future relealse. As with textures it is likely that some of the third party models will be more detailed than the defaults.

    5. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: As a 29 year old who doesn't quite 'get' MC...

      29 is old enough to "get" MC, but you need to have started your family in your late teens. I don't know the actual stats, but I'm guessing that teen parents aren't a big part of the El Reg demographic, so you've probably got a few years to wait.

      Joking apart, Minecraft has much of the same appeal as Lego, but is a lot cheaper and truer to the original blocky ethos of the latter. Making blocks smaller would make building anything more tedious so it might actually count as a backward step.

  14. Wyrdness

    Something is blocky in the state of Denmark.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      I tried to come up with a Hamlet reference, but I was going for a Yorick connection and couldn't manage it.

  15. ChrisBoy

    Legoland?

    I know Denmark is the home of Lego, but I didn't know the country was actually made of the stuff!

  16. Steven Jones

    Never mind the nominal scale, it's detaile that matters.

    1:1 as a definition is clear nonsense. What matters is resolution. In principle, you can zoom any source of mapping information into whatever scaling you like, but it's the mapping resolution that gives you the detail. If what is meant be 1:1 scaling means that you can expect to see on your computer screen the level of detail you would see if there in person, then it's clearly not the case. Such a model would require vastly more information than a mere 1TB.

    So, as always, don't swallow the headline, but find out what it really means.

  17. NomNomNom

    A very foolish move. Now terrorists can dry run their atrocities from the comfort of their desks. The security services must be spinning in their graves. Guess the danish politicians had been smoking too much of you know what!

  18. southpacificpom
    FAIL

    OMG!

    A 1TB minecraft map with java running too. Just don't run it in high res mode...

    1. Dodel
      Pint

      Re: OMG!

      Minecraft chunk loads, and only loads a specific area of blocks into memory, so the actual size of map isn't an issue, however you would need a e beefy GPU to use a texture pack over 128x128,

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Denmark is Baltic?

    You must be kiddin me.

  20. PaulyV

    I have never played Minecraft

    ...I am 42. I like Halo on occasion.

    Should I?

    1. Not That Andrew

      Re: I have never played Minecraft

      Dunno, if you like open world sandbox games, maybe? It's about as far from Halo as computer gaming gets. Although with mods you can play it as an FPS, or an RPG. Or you can just stay in Creative Mode and build stuff.

      1. PaulyV

        Re: I have never played Minecraft

        Okay, that's Sunday evening sorted - will give it a go. Thanks.

      2. stucs201

        Re: I have never played Minecraft

        You could say that Minecraft isn't actually a game. Its really a toy. Like other toys its actually up to your imagination what game(s) you decide to play with it.

        1. sisk

          Re: I have never played Minecraft

          If it were just creative mode I'd agree with you, but in survival mode it is very much a game. It even has end game credits (you get that after you kill the end dragon - no easy feat, especially if you're playing on hardcore).

          1. stucs201

            Re: I have never played Minecraft

            Even survival mode there are many more things to do than fight monsters and kill the dragon. I see killing the dragon as just one of many things you can decide to do, or not. Its not even the last thing to do, if you focus on it you can get it dead in a few hours but not have what most players would consider an established base.

            I'd agree about hardcore mode though, that probably is more gamelike and you probably do want to focus on the dragon rather than build stuff that'll get deleted one day.

  21. Lyndon Hills 1

    TNT is banned

    Denmark has it's own postal system as well, so this will please traditionalists.

  22. jonfr

    Denmark is Scandinavian

    Denmark is not Baltic. It's Scandinavian, there is an difference in terms of culture. As for the map. Many people need bigger hard drives before they can download the map.

  23. John Savard

    In the old days

    They'd have been worried about how such a thing might make it easier for someone to invade the real-world version of Denmark. Generally thought of as a Scandinavian country, by the way.

  24. sisk
    Trollface

    This so makes me want to spam /give @p 383 64 4 into the command interface then run all over the place with my right mouse button held down. But officer, I didn't blow up Denmark. It was a Creeper apocalypse.....

  25. Herby
    Joke

    So, one can...

    Scrape Tivoli Gardens, and rebuild it as Disneyland Denmark?

    Interesting thought. Just remember the stone entrances to the Carlsberg Brewery and the symbols they have. Probably want to use the forbidden TNT there, but keep the brewery!

  26. jonfr

    No TNT in Minecraft did go well, short of

    According to DR Nyheder the plea about not using TNT did not go that well. The map of Denmark has been so good as destroyed by 10.000 players taking a poke at the Minecraft server hosting Denmark. The traffic was so high at one point that the server crashed. I hope the creators of the map of Denmark made a backup copy of it for an hard reset in the future.

    http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Indland/2014/04/25/124123.htm

    There are pictures of the damage in this news. Its in Danish.

  27. streaky

    "use of tnt has been banned"

    Yarly? *digs out a hacked client*. Those protections never work if you don't want them to...

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Obviously someone needs to use this to recreate scenes from "The Killing", "Borgen" of (about half of) "The Bridge|Broen|Bron"

  29. itzman
    Paris Hilton

    Yes, that IS the real Denmark

    Indistinguishable from a mine craft simulation.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    EUnits

    I believe the correct term for 1m tall item in Denmark is a "Toksvig", and cubed - "Sandy Toksvig"

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