The entire real world, rendered as a Minecraft map. Pan, zoom, search, and navigate anywhere on Earth -- every tile is generated on-the-fly from real geographic data using a full 3D voxel pipeline. Built in 3 days.
Real OpenStreetMap data -- roads, buildings, parks, water, forests -- transformed into Minecraft block art through a voxel rendering pipeline. Buildings have actual height extrusion, terrain follows real elevation data, and trees are placed with biome-appropriate sprites.
Each 256px tile goes through a collect-then-decide pipeline:
- Fetch -- pull vector tiles, building footprints, roads, elevation, and satellite imagery in parallel from 5 data sources
- Collect votes -- each source votes on what every pixel should be (water, road, building, forest, etc.) independently
- Resolve -- a two-key resolver picks the winner per pixel: feature priority (what it IS) first, source trust as tiebreaker
- Downsample -- majority-vote downsampling from 4096 to 1024 with thin feature preservation (roads and paths survive)
- Heightmap -- decode Terrarium elevation into Minecraft Y levels
- Voxelize -- place blocks column-by-column: surface, subsurface, trees, building extrusion, water fill
- Color sample -- satellite imagery matched to nearest Minecraft block for realistic roof/road colors
- Render -- top-down orthographic render with Minecraft-style north-face shading for depth
Cold tiles render in ~4-15 seconds. Cached tiles are instant.
The pipeline recognizes 24 terrain types including water, grass, forest, farmland, sand, rock, snow, roads, buildings, parking, railway, wetland, parks, pools, sports pitches, playgrounds, dirt paths, and more. Biome-aware palettes adapt block choices based on latitude and elevation -- Mediterranean, temperate, arid, arctic, etc.
Search any place on Earth with autocomplete powered by Photon geocoding. Select a result to fly to it with a place card showing name, address, and a directions button.
Get driving directions with distance and estimated time. Add waypoints, swap origin/destination, and expand step-by-step instructions.
Hit Start Navigation to enter a GPS-tracked navigation mode with a pixel-art compass that rotates to your heading, step-by-step turn instructions, and distance to the next maneuver.
Enable Real-Time Lighting in settings to sync the map's atmosphere to your actual time of day. Dawn, day, dusk, and night each have distinct color tints -- or force any time with cheats.
Weather is fetched from Open-Meteo for wherever you're looking on the map. A Minecraft clock HUD displays the time with a 64-frame animated clock face, current temperature, and conditions.
Weather cheats let you force rain, snow, thunder, or clear skies -- complete with animated particle overlays on the map.
Add friends with a 6-character friend code, see their live location on the map in real time over WebSocket, and chat in-game. Achievement popups fire for milestones like your first search, first navigation, and first friend added.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Title Screen | Authentic Minecraft title screen with scrolling panorama, random splash text, and "Map Edition" subtitle |
| Accounts | Create an account with a player name to unlock social features |
| Friends | Share a 6-digit friend code, see friends' live locations on the map via WebSocket |
| Chat | Real-time multiplayer chat, Minecraft PE style |
| Music | Iconic Minecraft tracks (Sweden, Mice on Venus, Subwoofer Lullaby, Living Mice) with volume controls |
| Ambient Sounds | Biome-aware ambient audio (grass, water, rain, birdsong) that responds to visible terrain |
| Sound Effects | Authentic Minecraft UI sounds (clicks, chest open/close, level up, orb pickup) |
| Achievements | Unlock achievements for first search, first navigation, first friend, and more |
| POI Markers | Points of interest with Minecraft item sprite icons (restaurants, shops, hospitals, fuel, etc.) |
| Nether Portal | Teleport effect with portal animation when jumping 5km+ on the map |
| Map Frame | Decorative Minecraft item frame border around the viewport |
| 3 Map Layers | Switch between Minecraft, Satellite, and Roads views |
| Coordinates | Cursor position shown as Minecraft X/Z coordinates plus real lat/lng |
| Cheats Menu | Force time of day (dawn/day/dusk/night) and weather (clear/rain/thunder/snow) |
| Home/Spawn Point | Set a spawn point and teleport back anytime |
| Location Tracking | GPS tracking with a rotating player marker |
| Tile Prefetcher | Background tile loading for smooth exploration |
| Loading Screen | Minecraft-style loading bar with "Building terrain..." steps |
Fully responsive design built for touch. 44px touch targets, Safari-safe viewport handling, and thumb-friendly controls -- the full map experience on your phone.
| Source | Provides |
|---|---|
| VersaTiles | Base vector tiles (roads, land use, water) |
| Overpass API | Complete OSM buildings, roads, paths, land features |
| Overture Maps | Microsoft AI building footprints (fills OSM gaps -- 2.6B buildings worldwide) |
| Esri World Imagery | Satellite imagery for roof color sampling and ground refinement |
| AWS Terrain Tiles | Real elevation data (Terrarium encoding) |
| Photon | Place search & geocoding |
| OSRM | Driving directions & routing |
| Open-Meteo | Real-time weather data |
- Tile Server: Express.js + TypeScript with SQLite tile cache
- Rendering: Node Canvas -- 2D top-down voxel render with north-face shading
- Frontend: Leaflet.js with pixelated rendering, vanilla JS
- Vector Tiles: @mapbox/vector-tile + pbf
- Building Data: PMTiles (Overture Maps)
- Real-time: WebSocket server for friends & chat
- Auth: bcryptjs + session cookies
- Deployment: Docker (Coolify-ready)
cd app
npm install
npx tsx src/serve.tsOpen http://localhost:3001.
docker build -t minemap .
docker run -p 3001:3001 minemapMIT
Not affiliated with Mojang or Microsoft. Built by Ryan Reid.