Build the Earth

Build the Earth (BTE) is a project dedicated to creating a 1:1 scale model of Earth within the sandbox video game Minecraft.

History
Build The Earth was created by YouTuber PippenFTS in March 2020 as a collaborative effort to recreate Earth in the video game Minecraft. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, the server aimed to provide players with the opportunity to virtually experience and construct the world. In a YouTube video, PippenFTS called for prospective participants to recreate man-made structures over a rudimentary model of Earth's terrain. A Discord server created to help coordinate the project attracted over a hundred thousand users by April 2020.

Following unsuccessful attempts to generate terrain using a Mercator projection, organizers opted for a modified version of the Dymaxion map projection. The alternative approach prioritized minimizing distortions in land masses, at the cost of highly distorted oceans.

Minecraft developer Mojang Studios featured the project on their website on Earth Day 2020. In July 2020, YouTuber MrBeast released a video where he and 50 other people built his hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina within the project.

In 2020, a full sized recreation of the Taj Mahal was completed on the server by Daniel Tan. In 2022, a team of over 2,000 players constructed a recreation of many places in New York City on a 1:1 scale, including many famous sites such as the 9/11 memorial, New York County Supreme Court, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and Soho. A team of over 400 players has completed construction on multiple buildings from Portugal, including the Algarve International Circuit.

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 services, such as OpenStreetMap, 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."