Ordinance survey maps, nobody uses those any more right? Of course not, we all have GPS. Besides we're gamers, the only ordnance we know anything about is off map artillery. That said, it seems those maps aren't totally useless, as someone used it to map out the whole of the UK in Minecraft.

In total, it took 22 billion blocks to create and shows off the country's roads, terrain and rivers. This sizeable project was taken up by intern Joseph Braybrook, working in collaboration with the team from Ordinance Survey's (OS) Innovation Labs division. Together they ported a 3D model of the country into the sandbox game and generated the map, which came out looking pretty good.

“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,” OS said in a statement. “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.”

The map ended up as 3.6GB in size and can be downloaded here. When you load up the save you will start off at the OS HQ in Southampton.

KitGuru Says: This map file is massive, but it could be a cool map to base some multiplayer servers on. Are you going to download and explore this Great British Minecraft map?

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