So, I don’t fully understand this except they successfully found a repeatable method to turn a map projection with height into a playably accurate (not just technically accurate) representation of real earth in minecraft. I think if I reread this a few times it’ll click but I’ll just say that I’m impressed at least by the presentation on this page.
“The real world is not flat – on a large scale it’s pretty much ellipsoidal. However, we often want to represent a part of the surface of the Earth on a map (on paper or on a computer screen) – so we use map projections to map from the curved surface of the ellipsoid onto a flat surface (2D).
We also agree that our landscape is not really a positively curved, rotationally symmetric ellipsoid. There are hills, valleys, buildings and so on. We get around that with the help of so-called height models, which represent the surface in a coordinate system which is a combination of a flat 2D planar system and a height axis. The height axis can represent height above the ellipsoid, a truly geometric concept, or the height above a geoid, that carries the important geophysical information that water tends to run downhill!”
“1. Ocean, 2. Reference ellipsoid, 3. Local plumb line, 4. Continent, 5. Geoid. By MesserWoland (Own work)”
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Learning as I go: I thought “Ok, that’s the EU but what about USA?
“ETRS89 is the EU-recommended frame of reference for geodata for Europe.[4] It is the only geodetic datum to be used for mapping and surveying purposes in Europe. It plays the same role for Europe as NAD-83 for North America. (NAD-83 is a datum in which the North American Plate as a whole is static, and which is used for mapping and surveying in the US, Canada, and Mexico.) ETRS89 and NAD-83 are based on the GRS80 ellipsoid”
So, we EACH use our own tectonic PLATE as STATIC and everybody else’s as moving yet somehow they work together .. except maybe in the fault lines.
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