AtmosphericBeatsMC

What's new on EarthToMC v1.8 - Seasons based snow/ice cover, ocean biomes, coral reefs, custom map projections - 2025/09/08

Overview of the software: EarthToMC v1.8-beta [​2025/09/08] - Generate a Minecraft Map of any place of the world | Patreon

Download post: EarthToMC v1.8-beta [​2025/09/08] - Download and Installation tutorial | Patreon


-----

Season-based Snow/Ice cover

In EarthToMC v1.8 it is now possible to specify a season on which to base various aspects such as snow areas, ice extent in polar areas, marine biomes based on sea temperature


This is the result for winter and summer, as seen from the map preview for a 1:1000 scale map of North America:

Snow is based on monthly mean temperatures from the ECMWF ERA5 climate model, while snow cover is based on polar ice extent data from the Met Office's OSTIA (Operational Sea Surface Temperature and Ice Analysis) dataset.

When snow conditions are met, non-snow biomes are converted to vanilla snow biomes. This allowed the following new biomes to be added to the maps:

• Snowy Plains
  
• Snowy Slopes
  
• Snowy Beach
  
• Snowy Taiga
  
• Grove
  
• Frozen River
  
• Frozen Ocean
  

Sea Surface Temperature based Ocean biomes

Furthermore, based on the sea temperatures of the OSTIA dataset, three new marine biomes are now used, dividing the ocean into three classes:

• Cold Biome when the monthly averaged SST is below 15°
  
• Ocean when the monthly averaged SST is between 15° and 25°
  
• Lukewarm Ocean when the monthly averaged SST is above 25°
  

Coral reefs

I've also added coral reefs to the maps, using the Warm Ocean biome where a coral reef is observed in the Global Distribution of Coral Reefs dataset

Fixed grass/foliage colors

Since the very first release of EarthToMC, due to biomes temperatures changes to handle the snow, the grass/foliage color was darker than the vanilla one in certain maps. This issue is now fixed, the color will be not dependent on temperatures anymore

Custom Map Projections

An example of a working Lambert Conic Conformal projection on a low res USA map In v1.8




Instead of manually writing the EPSG code, it will be possible to choose a compatible projection using a drop-down menu

All the EPSG and ESRI codes with meter as unit measure should be compatible now, but the Custom Projections feature remains an experimental feature: it's trial and error




Overview of the software: EarthToMC v1.8-beta [​2025/09/08] - Generate a Minecraft Map of any place of the world | Patreon

Download post: EarthToMC v1.8-beta [​2025/09/08] - Download and Installation tutorial | Patreon

Full changelog

• [​NEW FEATURE] It's now possible to specify a season for computing the snow cover instead of using a global fixed snow height value: snow cover is realistically based on Climate data from ECMWF ERA5 dataset
  
• [​NEW FEATURE] Sea Ice is now included into the maps and it's based on the selected month to be used as reference for climate in the map (it will appear as Frozen Ocean biome)
  
• [​NEW FEATURE] Added coral reefs to the map, they will appear in game as Warm Ocean biome
  
• [​NEW FEATURE] Added 2 new ocean biomes basing on the sea surface temperature for the selected season: Cold Ocean where the SST is below 15°C, Lukewarm Ocean where the SST is above 25°C
  
• Thanks to the new climate generation system, 7 new snowy vanilla biomes are added in the maps (Snowy Plains, Snowy Slopes, Grove, Snowy Taiga, Snowy Beach, Frozen River, Frozen Ocean)
  
• Fixed a bug causing the color of grass and foliage to be darker than vanilla in certain types of maps
  
• Fixed missing snow and glaciers in Greenland and Antartica
  
• Fixed missing terrain elevation in Greenland and Antartica when doing a map with resolution between 100m and 1000m
  
• Fixed missing dirt terrain areas in Northern Canada and Greenland above latitude 80°N
  
• Fixed a bug causing missing terrain elevation in the northern hemisphere when generating a map across the equator
  
• Fixed a bug causing missing roads when generating low resolution maps with roads (introduced in v1.7)
  
• Fixed a bug causing a critical error when doing high resolution maps without buildings (introduced in v1.7)
  
• Fixed a bug while downloading the land cover dataset when doing a map across longitude 0 (Spain/France/UK bug)
  
• Fixed a bug causing missing land use datasets (biomes) in New Zealand
  
• Better drawing of certain types of raceways
  
• A list of compatible custom projections for the selected area will be shown instead of manually having to write the EPSG code. Custom projections are still an experimental feature.
  
• Fixed a syntax error when generating the datapack (introduced by mistake in v1.7)
  
• Fixed a bug when not specifying the paths for the QGIS project / WorldPainter Tiles, leading to a not successful start of the generation (blank logs, no progress at all)
  
• Extended compatibility of the Journeymap waypoints with more types of custom projections
  

About the new cities details update in EarthToMC v1.7 | Patreon

Recently I've been working on an important update of the details of the cities, trying to maximize the use of informations from OpenStreetMap: this update is also the first development of cities details since the very first release of EarthToMC

Since in OpenStreetMap, in certain cities, complex buildings are composed of multiple parts, I've developed a new method for the rendering of the buildings which outperforms the current simple rasterization method based on applying the maximum building height for every part of a specific building

This allows for massive improvements of buildings shapes and heights, as you can see from those examples:


Colosseum - Rome, Italy





Castel Sant'Angelo - Rome, Italy





Milan Cathedral - Milan, Italy




The update also adds new elements in the maps, such as:

• 
  Walls, barriers, city walls, fences, gates
  
• 
  Paved surfaces
  
• 
  Street lamps
  
• 
  Pedestrian crossings
  
• 
  Piers and breakwaters
  
• 
  Traffic lights
  
• 
  Meadows and gardens
  

Single trees located where they are in real life have been improved compared to last version





Burnham Harbor - Chicago, USA





The White House - Washington D.C., USA





Grant Park - Chicago, USA


Bridges in Rome, Italy





Train Station in Milan, Italy

NEW UPDATE 2025/02/18 - EarthToMC v1.2beta changelog:

• [​NEW FUNCTIONALITY] You can now save, stop and resume the generation of the maps! A list of the unfinished maps will appear when you click on "Resume an unfinished map" on the top bar
  
• [​NEW FUNCTIONALITY] You can now let EarthToMC open every generated Worldpainter tile one by one for manual editing. After saving the last tile, the generation will proceed with the export stage
  
• [​NEW FUNCTIONALITY] You can now let EarthToMC save locally all the downloaded datasets in order to avoid re-downloading them when running multiple maps on the same area. MASSIVE speedup of generations!
  
• [​NEW FUNCTIONALITY] You can now "Compress the outputs into .7z files ready to be delivered", for easier transfers between servers/sharing the generated maps
  
• [​NEW FUNCTIONALITY] ASTER GDEM V3 data is now integrated into EarthToMC, this allows to use terrain elevation on areas with latitude > 60°N or < -60°S
  
• [​NEW FUNCTIONALITY] You can now select two new underground features settings (No caves/No ores with stone mix material, Only ores with stone mix material)
  
• [​NEW FUNCTIONALITY] You can now define the depth of the water bodies using a toggle in Advanced Mode, choosing between a 8 blocks depth (default) or a 20 blocks depth
  
• [​NEW FUNCTIONALITY] Tracks and steps and unclassified roads** from OpenStreetMap are now integrated in the generations
  
• ..and 23 more! FULL CHANGELOG --> https://www.earthtomc.com/app/CHANGELOG.txt
  
  

Public post (overview of the software): EarthToMC v1.2-beta - Generate a Minecraft Map of any place of the world | Patreon

To get access to EarthToMC, you’ll need to subscribe to a Top Tier or higher membership on Patreon. Once you do, you’ll be able to see a post detailing how to install the software!(EarthToMC v1.2-beta - Download and Installation tutorial | Patreon)

Since some users have trouble downloading maps using Torrent, or are simply reluctant to use it, starting from the next releases the maps will be distributed both via Torrent and via Google Cloud link so that maps can be downloaded without using a client.

If you can’t download an already released map via torrent, let me know in the comments and I will upload the map to Google Cloud.

Additionally, I have introduced a package of software algorithm updates starting from the next maps:

• Fixed a bug in buildings where strange artifacts could appear on the edges of roofs when two or more buildings are adjacent to each other.
• Improved the management of the height of rivers and lakes relative to the elevation of the surrounding terrain.
• Fixed a bug when using the "GLC FCS 30" land cover dataset for the processing of biomes where some tiles were not downloaded successfully (only outside USA)
• Fixed a bug in sea structures where the sea level was applied above them.
• Fixed a bug where some viaducts and bridges were not excluded from roads and railways.
• Fixed a bug where railways inside stations were applied on top of the structure
• Excluded infrastructures that appear on OpenStreetMaps as “proposed”, not yet realized.
• Fixed a bug where the “mesa” terrain could be erroneously applied in coastal areas with significant changes in terrain elevation.