Ordnance Survey maps the UK in Minecraft

A map of the UK made entirely of Minecraft blocks has had an upgrade to include local roads, railways even people's houses.

Ordnance Survey, the creators of the map, has recreated 224,000 sq. km of Britain using 83 billion blocks, an increase on the 22 billion used for the original map. It means that each block now represents 25m of real-world Britain.

The organization said that an interactive version of the map would be available from its website to enable users to locate their own homes.

Since its release in 2011, Minecraft has become a hugely popular video game, where users create worlds built of blocks that can be mined for raw materials.

The original Minecraft UK map was created by intern Joseph Braybrook over two weeks in September 2013. Mr Braybrook has now updated the map after joining the Ordnance Survey through a graduate recruitment scheme.

Mr Braybrook said that increasing the scale of the map had made it more detailed and given it a "more expansive appearance that is closer to real life".

Ordnance Survey announced that the one-gigabyte map would be made available for download free-of-charge for users to play on. The original version has already been downloaded more than 100,000 times.

The increased resolution of the new map should allow Minecraft players to do much more than was possible with the first map.

"I've attempted to re-create Great Britain to be more realistic, while maintaining the gameplay elements people love from the game," Mr Braybrook told the BBC.

It is thought that the map is the biggest Minecraft map in existence that uses real-world geographical data.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.