Overview

Build the Earth is an ambitious collective Minecraft building project which pursues a goal to recreate the planet Earth at a 1:1 scale in Minecraft. The project started in March 2020, drawing the attention of over 50,000 builders within one month.

Background

On March 21st, 2020, YouTuber and Minecraft builder PippenFTS posted a video^[1] announcing the start of Build the Earth project. The project pursued a goal of recreating the Earth in Minecraft at a 1:1 scale. The video accumulated over 9.2 million views in one month (shown below).

In the video, PippenFTS explained that he managed to make a 1:1 scale version of the planet by utilizing Cubic Chunks mode, which allowed to bypass Minecraft's 255m height limit. In the project, the globe is projected onto a flat rectangular map.

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

On the same day, BuildTheEarth Discord^[2] was launched, with buildthearth.net^[3] website being created on March 24th.

Developments

In the following month, PippenFTS posted update videos about the project. On April 3rd, 2020, YouTuber^[4] reported that the Discord server for the project attracted over 50,000 memebers within one week and outlined the problem with choosing a way to project the globe onto the surface (shown below, left).

On April 18th, 2020, Pippen FPS reported^[5] that with help of mathematician Daniel Strebe a more accurate Dymaxion map projection would be applied to enchance accuracy of the Minecraft recreation (video shown below, right).

Online Reactions

The announcement of the project attracted significant attention online both within the Minecraft community and outside of it, as well as from mainstream media. On March 27th, 2020, Eurogamer^[6] reported on the project, with VICE^[7] running an article on April 2nd, 2020.

The Discord server for the project gained over 52,300 members in one month.

Search Interest

External References