Minecraft enthusiasts can recreate virtual versions of their home towns by combining publicly-available open data with a new tool developed by a web specialist at the University of Southampton.
Christopher Gutteridge, developed a software tool that when you put the data from OpenStreetMap and LIDAR into Minecraft you can automatically create a lifelike model of any place in England within a very short time. By giving the software a region to generate it goes to the LIDAR site to work out the shapes of things, and to OpenStreetMap to work out what is a building, grass, roads or water.
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