This is true, but untrue. After a certain distance, the MC world "drops off" It creates a "farland" separated by void space. The cube that is the map before dropping off like that is a bit bigger in size than the planet Venus.
The worlds are infinite, and the farlands have been removed so as you walk new chunks will load (That's why Kurtjmac in Farlands or Bust has to play on 1.7.3, the last version of minecraft that had the farlands)
The earths area surface is 5100000000 square klilometers.
2304000000000000 / 5100000000 = 4608000. thats 4608000 times larger than earth.
Hopefully im correct.
divide 2304000000000000000000 by 256 for 1 layer: 9000000000000000000
divide by earths size: 9000000000000000000 / 5100000000 = 1764705882.35294117647059.
thats your answer.
and for size: we estimate 4,500,000 square meters and the mapfile is 37.9mb.
therefore: 1 kilometer is 1,000 meters so, 1 square kilometer is 1 kilometer x 1 kilometer or 1,000 meters x 1,000 meters or 1,000,000 square meters.
4,500,000 / 1,000,000 = 4.5
510,072,000 / 4.5 ~ 113,349,333
37.9 * 113,349,333 = 4,295,939,720 mb or (roughly) 4,195,253 GB or 4,096 Terabytes or 4 PETABYTES!
As of 2011, no storage system or network has achieved even one thousandth of a yottabyte (a zettabyte) of information. The combined space of all computerhard drives in the world was estimated at approximately 160 exabytes in 2006[1], and as of 2009, the Internet was estimated to contain close to 500 exabytes. which means an infinite world. unless you own a computer from CERN. yeah, they produce 16 petabytes of info every year.
To all the people who keep saying that it goes on and on, like atmdm said, this is true, but untrue. People have been mentioning that after a certain point, the game can't crunch the numbers right and it gets screwy. That IS a hard line at X/Z ±30,000,000, where this starts to happen, and you can't travel much farther.
In my worlds, after a while, i see no more land and nothing but sea ad sea and more sea. Once I tried to look for land by flying in Creative, but I went about 20 minutes and I went very far and it was still endless sea and I couldn't tell where I even came from so I used my Single Player Commands to return home. So, in conclusion, I think that after some point the map leads to nothing but endless and infinite sea.
In my worlds, after a while, i see no more land and nothing but sea ad sea and more sea. Once I tried to look for land by flying in Creative, but I went about 20 minutes and I went very far and it was still endless sea and I couldn't tell where I even came from so I used my Single Player Commands to return home. So, in conclusion, I think that after some point the map leads to nothing but endless and infinite sea.
I believe after a while it does just have an infinite ocean, but it would take months of flying to reach that point.
I DO think that the worlds that are in the super-flat game mode go on infinitely and randomly load villages every now and then. What I mentioned before was mostly only talking about the default land setting [which I prefer, because you can mine and don't get mauled by slimes every 5 seconds].
NPCs spawn everywhere, but in superflat, they are like the world itself, they keep generating. but, if you sprint for a few real-life days in one direction in a world, MC will not be able to handle it and the chunks will get screwy. it will keep regenerating forever, but just not as uniform as usual
The world stops generating ores, lighting, flowers, snow, trees, even hit boxes, everything stops generating but caves and grass/stone at 30,000,000 blocks out, both positive and negative 30,000,000. So that means its 60,000,000x60,000,000 blocks wide. Which is 3,600,000,000,000,000 blocks (or meters) surface area. Then the height which I would average at 68.
Wow that seems too smart to be right. Well correct me about anything if I'm wrong
EDIT: If you go too far out, you WILL get stuck and you won't be able to do anything. I've found it to be around 40,000,000 blocks out each way. If you have single player commands, then you wont be able to open up the chat thing either. Correct me if I'm wrong about this too.
Technically it wiol go on forever in the latteral plane, though as others have said errors will start to occur after a significant distance, vertcially there is a limit, not one intentionally placed but as you fly up you will eventually reach a point where java will crash and you cannot go any further.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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This is true, but untrue. After a certain distance, the MC world "drops off" It creates a "farland" separated by void space. The cube that is the map before dropping off like that is a bit bigger in size than the planet Venus.
3 billion x 3 billion = 9.e + 18 (9000000000000000000 square blocks per layer) * 256 = 2304000000000000000000 blocks / meters.
The earths area surface is 5100000000 square klilometers.2304000000000000 / 5100000000 = 4608000. thats 4608000 times larger than earth.Hopefully im correct.divide 2304000000000000000000 by 256 for 1 layer: 9000000000000000000
divide by earths size: 9000000000000000000 / 5100000000 = 1764705882.35294117647059.
thats your answer.
and for size: we estimate 4,500,000 square meters and the mapfile is 37.9mb.
therefore: 1 kilometer is 1,000 meters so, 1 square kilometer is 1 kilometer x 1 kilometer
or 1,000 meters x 1,000 meters
or 1,000,000 square meters.
4,500,000 / 1,000,000 = 4.5
510,072,000 / 4.5 ~ 113,349,333
37.9 * 113,349,333 = 4,295,939,720 mb or (roughly) 4,195,253 GB or 4,096 Terabytes or 4 PETABYTES!
As of 2011, no storage system or network has achieved even one thousandth of a yottabyte (a zettabyte) of information. The combined space of all computerhard drives in the world was estimated at approximately 160 exabytes in 2006[1], and as of 2009, the Internet was estimated to contain close to 500 exabytes. which means an infinite world. unless you own a computer from CERN. yeah, they produce 16 petabytes of info every year.
A minecraft world makes an appearance at 64K Km.
Link: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Farlands#In_Beta_1.8_and_above
Pre-1.8 it was a lot cooler out there, but there was something done that accidentally fixed it.
I believe after a while it does just have an infinite ocean, but it would take months of flying to reach that point.
http://www.minecraft.../wiki/Far_lands
64,000 Km
It has 130 Quadridlion Blocks
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html
Marv
Wow that seems too smart to be right. Well correct me about anything if I'm wrong
EDIT: If you go too far out, you WILL get stuck and you won't be able to do anything. I've found it to be around 40,000,000 blocks out each way. If you have single player commands, then you wont be able to open up the chat thing either. Correct me if I'm wrong about this too.
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>>>>>----------http://www.youtube.com/user/Rails646----------<<<<<