Build the Earth (BTE) is a project dedicated to creating a 1:1 scale model of

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

within the

sandbox A sandbox is a sandpit, a wide, shallow playground construction to hold sand, often made of wood or plastic. Sandbox or Sand box may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Sandbox (band), a Canadian rock music group * Sandbox ( ...

video game ''

Minecraft ''Minecraft'' is a sandbox game developed by Mojang Studios. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made public in May 2009 before being ...

''.

History

Build The Earth was created by

YouTuber A YouTuber is an online personality and/or influencer who produces videos on the video-sharing platform YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006. Influence Influent ...

PippenFTS in March 2020 as a collaborative effort to recreate

in the video game ''

''. In a YouTube video, PippenFTS called for prospective participants to recreate man-made structures over a rudimentary model of Earth's terrain. A

Discord Discord is a VoIP and instant messaging social platform. Users have the ability to communicate with voice calls, video calls, text messaging, media and files in private chats or as part of communities called "servers".The developer documenta ...

server created to help coordinate the project attracted over a hundred thousand users by April 2020. ''Minecraft'' developer

Mojang Studios Mojang Studios is a Swedish video game developer based in Stockholm. The studio is best known for developing the sandbox and survival game ''Minecraft'', the best-selling video game of all time. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent ...

featured the project on their website on

Earth Day Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EarthDay.org (formerly Earth Day Network) including 1 b ...

2020. In July 2020, YouTuber

MrBeast Jimmy Donaldson (born May 7, 1998), better known as MrBeast, is an American YouTube personality, credited with pioneering a genre of YouTube videos that centers on expensive stunts. His MrBeast YouTube channel had 112.2 million subscribers as ...

released a video where he and 50 other people built his hometown of

Raleigh, North Carolina Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the List of North Carolina county seats, seat of Wake County, North Carolina, Wake County in the United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, second-most ...

within the project.

Software

The Build The Earth project primarily depends on two ''Minecraft'' modifications to function: Cubic Chunks and Terra++. Cubic Chunks removes ''Minecraft''s limitation on building structures beyond a certain height. Terra++ uses information from

geographic data Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth (a geographic location or geographic position). It is also call ...

services, such as

OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a free, open geographic database updated and maintained by a community of volunteers via open collaboration. Contributors collect data from surveys, trace from aerial imagery and also import from other freely licensed g ...

, to automatically generate terrain to ease the building process. The project originally used the Terra 1-to-1 mod instead of Terra++. PippenFTS stated that "with the Cubic Chunks mod breaking Minecraft's vertical limitations, we can now experience the Earth in Minecraft, just as it is, with no downscaling of any kind."

References

External links

* {{Minecraft Minecraft servers 2020 works Internet properties established in 2020