Developer Mojang and publisher Microsoft market the popular sandbox game Minecraft mostly to kids and families. However, the game also attracts adult players who want to use the game to create highly ambitious projects.
Over the weekend, a large group of Minecraft modders posted word on the Minecraftbuilds subReddit (via IGN) that they have been working for years to create an accurate recreation of New York City inside the game.
The Reddit member d3_cent, who posted the images of the Minecraft NYC creation, stated that the project had taken four years to reach this stage. At that time, he noted that the thousands of Minecraft modders involved in the project had recreated about 68 percent of Lower Manhattan in the game.
He wrote more about just how detailed this project has become:
But yep it"s exact, every building has been manually recreated, the right amount of windows, correct window detailing, trash cans where they are irl, road signs, stop signs, everything:)
According to d3_cent, the modders have used data from "LIDAR for the elevation and OSM data for the general shapes of buildings" to get accurate views of lower Manhattan. A couple of the major public buildings in that part of the city, including Grand Central Station, even have their interiors rendered in Minecraft. Still, most of the buildings don"t have that level of accuracy.
If you are a Minecraft player and want to check out this NYC project for yourself, you can visit the server located on NYC.BuildTheEarth.Net if you are running Minecraft version 1.20.1 and above. The team is also always looking for new people who might want to join their team and continue their work to recreate the city inside the sandbox world of Minecraft. It will be interesting to see how far this team will go to make all of NYC in the game.