Using cutting-edge technology to create a Minecraft Kendal
The ‘Auld Grey Town’ as we’ve never seen it before! Cancer Care, Weeknotes 4
Our project to build a unique CancerCare Minecraft World to engage with, and potentially deliver therapy to, young people coping with bereavement or cancer in their families has reached an exciting milestone.
BlockBuilders, the developers delivering the project, has been pulling together two different open-source mapping data sets to build accurate Minecraft models of Kendal and Morecambe Bay.
The process uses Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) data from the Environment Agency which was originally captured as a means of flood monitoring. The data and was obtained by flying a plane over Kendal and Morecambe Bay and firing rapid laser pulses (thousands of times per second) at the ground surface. By examining the laser energy reflected back, the surface is captured as a dense cloud of 3D points which are then converted into highly detailed terrain models of the surface below.
When combined with the Ordnance Survey’s OpenMaps Local it provides the perfect dataset for converting into hundreds of thousands of Minecraft blocks, enabling Kendal to be recreated in Minecraft form.
This cutting-edge process was originally developed by BlockBuilders in 2016 as part of funding they received from Innovate UK.
As part of the project, BlockBuilders have also been busy setting up the Discord server will allow youth workers, therapists and young people to communicate in a way that is both natural and engaging.
A first trial run of the Minecraft World with the young people from the Young People’s Peer Support Group has been scheduled for Wednesday 31 March and the group, and youth workers, have been busy familiarising themselves and experimenting with the game in preparation!
