The Living Map
Engine
Real-world terrain in Minecraft. Walk from Mount Tahoma's glaciers to downtown Tacoma. Buildings, roads, water, forests — generated seamlessly as you explore.
A Paper plugin powered by OpenStreetMap, AWS elevation data, and the TEK8 Learning Lotus.
This project operates on the ancestral lands of the Puyallup, Nisqually, Muckleshoot, and Coast Salish peoples. We are guided by OCAP and CARE principles for Indigenous data sovereignty. The void in the map is itself data — knowledge that exists but is not ours to display.
Read our full Land Acknowledgement →How It Works
Real Elevation
AWS Terrarium tiles provide accurate terrain heights. Piecewise compression gives 1:1 detail in cities while keeping mountains walkable.
OSM Features
Buildings, roads, water bodies, parks, and forests from OpenStreetMap's Overpass API. Rendered as blocks with type-appropriate materials.
Living Biomes
Elevation-based biome assignment: temperate rainforest, montane conifers, alpine meadows, glaciers. Pacific NW vegetation with spruce, dark oak, ferns.
Whole Earth
The entire planet is explorable. Walk in any direction — terrain generates on-demand. Thread-safe concurrent generation with async data caching.
Powered by TEK8
The TEK8 Learning Lotus maps 8 elemental dice to forms of capital, wellness dimensions, and knowledge domains. Each petal drives a data layer in the engine.
Research Papers
Terrain Integration
Methods, challenges, and the FAWE breakthrough. Why .mca file injection fails and how the ChunkGenerator API provides seamless live terrain generation.
Data Layer Architecture
60+ public datasets organized into 7 tiers — from forests and water to supply chain disposal. GIS tool stack: PostGIS, GeoServer, QGIS, Overpass API.
TEK8 Integrated Framework
The Crystal Cycle as a world-generation protocol. 8 petals mapped to engine capabilities. Quillverse narrative bridge. OCAP/CARE data sovereignty. The supply chain circuit.
All citations tracked in Zotero Group Library 6420794
Centered on Tahoma
Mount Tahoma, the Mother of Waters, stands at Minecraft coordinates (0, 0). Every location on Earth is positioned at its true relative distance and direction from the mountain. The glaciers that feed the Puyallup, Nisqually, and White rivers are the headwaters of this world.
46.8523°N, 121.7603°W — 4,392 meters — MC (0, 0)