Let's play - the use of Minecraft® to communicate the complexity of the deep subsurface to the public

Minecraft^® is an open world, sandbox-style 3D game that was first published in 2009. It allows the player to build its own world and constructions out of a number of cubic blocks. In the standard version, one block equals 1x1x1 meter in size. This world can then be interactively explored by the player, or, if published, by other players. According to Wikipedia the game was sold over 176,000,000 times. This large number of users combined with the possibility of creating personal and predefined worlds led to the idea of using Minecraft^® to present geologic 3D models to the public.

The British Geological Survey developed a FME^®-workflow to convert structural 3D-Models from GoCAD into Minecraft^® worlds, which we adapted. First the GoCAD-file is translated into a wavefront-obj-file (pointcloud). Minecraft^® offers a wide range of possible block types. These types refer to different materials the block will consist of. For example, one block can be assigned different geological lithologies such as sandstone, granite, or quartz. The points of the obj-file are then assigned these specific properties and converted into Minecraft^® blocks. Finally, all the blocks are then combined into a Minecraft® world.

There is one limitation to consider however: while there is no limitation in the lateral extent, a Minecraft^® world is only allowed to have a height of 255 blocks. Deep reaching underground models have to be scaled in order to look reasonable within the limitations of this Minecraft^® vertical extent. We first scaled the original GoCAD-model by the factor 1/10 and then made the final adjustments within the FME^®-workflow to use as much vertical space as possible.

We will present examples for different geological 3D models realized as Minecraft^® worlds, including examples from Germany and Great Britain.

Publishing geologic 3D models of the subsurface in the form of Minecraft^® worlds enables us to reach a broad audience (only few people own a GoCAD license), it gives the user an opportunity to interactively explore the subsurface and the gaming background makes it easy to engage young people in the subsurface. Another advantage is to use the Minecraft^® world in combination with a VR-system to intensify the experience of the subsurface.