Tellus

Tellus is a mod that replicates real-world terrain, roads and buildings in Minecraft by converting various open-sourced geographical datasets into chunks in real-time. It focuses on realistic elevation (30m globally with more detailed coverage for areas that support it), biome placement, cities, buildings, and climate-driven time and weather, aiming to transform Minecraft into a playable, voxelised map of the Earth.

Inspired by and partially based on Gegy’s Terrarium: https://modrinth.com/mod/terrarium

Survival note: Some survival features are still missing (including certain features and biomes). While a survival world is possible, upcoming updates may break those worlds; for now Tellus is better suited for testing and exploration than long-term survival.

Internet & data note: Tellus requires an active internet connection and will not work offline. It gradually streams terrain datasets, (e.g. land cover, climate, and weather data) so expect ongoing data usage that varies with how much of the world you explore.

Server support note: Tellus must be installed on the server, but is not required on clients. Official server support is not available yet; for now you should create the world in singleplayer first, then move that world to the server (with Tellus installed) so new chunks generate with Tellus.

Note: generative AI was used to assist with the creation of this mod.

Features

• Earth-scale terrain generated from geographic elevation data
• Highly customizable terrain generation (scale, height limits, and more)
• Built-in terrain preview screen for visualizing settings before world creation
• Biomes placed to match real-world climate regions
• Real-time weather and time systems (optional)
• Dedicated Distant Horizons integration
• Voxy real-time chunk ingestion support
• In-game map teleport UI for choosing real-world locations

Distant Horizons Integration

Tellus supports Distant Horizons to render planet-scale terrain far beyond vanilla view distance. When DH is installed, distant terrain is built using Tellus data and settings instead of generic vanilla sampling.

• Approximate mode: Tellus takes advantage of a a specific feature in DH that samples elevation, land-cover, climate, and water and more data directly to drastically improve generation speeds when using DH, although discards certain features such as accurate foilage and structures (e.g. villages, ruined portals)
• Detailed mode: Tellus falls back to DH's chunk-based generator for far terrain, which is more accurate but significantly slower.

Because Tellus worlds are Earth-scale, use of DH or Voxy is strongly recommended and is almost essential for comfortable exploration and long-distance views.

Some commands

• /tellus map: Opens the GeoTP map UI (requires permissions).
• /tellus weather: Shows local Tellus weather and time information based on your current in-game position.
• /tellus config weather enable_realtime_time <true|false>: Overrides the real-time time setting on the server (requires permissions).
• /tellus config weather enable_realtime_weather <true|false>: Overrides the real-time weather setting on the server (requires permissions).

More commands will be added over time.

Settings

These options are available in the "Customize World Generation" screen when creating a Tellus world.

World Settings

• World Scale: Controls how many real-world meters are represented by one block. Lower values create more detailed, larger worlds; higher values compress distances and features. Current limits are 1:1m to 1:500m per block, with larger scales planned up to 1:40km.
• Terrestrial Height Scale: Multiplier that converts elevation above sea level from meters to blocks. Higher values produce taller mountains and landforms.
• Oceanic Height Scale: Multiplier that converts elevation below sea level from meters to blocks. Higher values deepen oceans and trenches.
• Height Offset: Shifts all terrain up or down by a fixed number of blocks. Use this to raise or lower the entire world.
• Sea Level: Sets the waterline in blocks without shifting the terrain. Set to Automatic to track the height offset.
• Max Altitude: Upper world limit in blocks. Set to Automatic to let Tellus compute a safe cap based on your scale settings.
• Min Altitude: Lower world limit in blocks. Set to Automatic to let Tellus compute a safe floor based on your scale settings.
• River/Lake Shoreline Blend: Distance in blocks used to smooth river and lake edges into nearby terrain.
• Ocean Shoreline Blend: Distance in blocks used to smooth ocean coastlines into land.
• Limit Shoreline Blend on Cliffs: Prevents shoreline smoothing on steep slopes to preserve sharp cliffs.

Ecological Settings (work in progress)

These options are currently locked and not adjustable yet. They describe what will be configurable in a future update.

• Land Vegetation: Will enable grasses, flowers, and small plants on land.
• Land Vegetation Density: Will control how dense land vegetation appears.
• Tree Density: Will control how many trees spawn in eligible biomes.
• Aquatic Vegetation: Will enable kelp and seagrass in water.
• Crops in Villages: Will add village farm plots during village generation.

Geological Settings

The cave and underground generation system is still work in progress, so expect changes here.

• Cave Generation: Toggles underground cave generation.
• Ore Distribution: Enables vanilla ore distribution in Tellus worlds.
• Lava Pools: Enables underground lava pools.

Structure Settings

This section lets you toggle vanilla structures and world features on or off, such as villages, temples, monuments, ruins, and underground features like Deep Dark and amethyst geodes. Some structures (notably Deep Dark and certain ocean structures) may not generate properly yet and are still work in progress.

Real-Time Settings

• Real-Time Time: Syncs the in-game day/night cycle to real-world time based on your in-game location, so sunrise and sunset match that location's local clock.
• Real-Time Weather: Pulls live weather conditions for your location and mirrors them in-game (rain, thunder, or snow) instead of Minecraft's default weather rolls.
• Historical Snow Coverage (work in progress): Tracks recent temperature and snowfall data to decide if snow should appear and persist on the ground, creating more realistic seasonal snow coverage.

Compatibility Settings

• Distant Horizons Render Mode: Fast uses Tellus's LOD generator to build simplified distant terrain quickly with lower cost. Detailed asks Distant Horizons to use full chunk generation for far terrain, which is more accurate but significantly slower and heavier. For most setups, keeping Fast LOD generation is recommended.
• LOD Water Resolver: Adds detailed water depth sampling to Distant Horizons fast LODs, improving coastlines, lakes, and ocean floors at distance but with extra cost. If you plan to play around water-heavy regions, it is suggested to keep this enabled; otherwise you can disable it for better performance.
• Coming Soon: Additional compatibility options are work in progress and currently unavailable.

Cache

• OSM map: Cached map tiles used by the teleport map UI. Deleting will force re-downloads as you browse.
• ESA WorldCover: Cached land cover tiles used for biome and vegetation lookups.
• Terrain tiles: Cached elevation tiles used for terrain height sampling.
• Total: Combined size of all Tellus caches (read-only).
• Delete cache / Delete all cache: Removes cached data to free disk space; data will be re-downloaded or rebuilt as needed.

Data Sources

ESA WorldCover 2021 (land cover)

• ESA WorldCover 2021 (10 m land cover, v200)
• (c) ESA WorldCover project / Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2021)
• processed by ESA WorldCover consortium.
• License: CC BY 4.0
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7254221
• In-game processing: reprojected to the world grid, resampled to blocks, and cached as tiles for fast lookup.

Koppen-Geiger climate classification

• Source: Beck, H.E., Zimmermann, N.E., McVicar, T.R., et al. (2018).
• Present and future Koppen-Geiger climate classification maps at 1-km resolution (Scientific Data).
• License: CC BY 4.0
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Publication DOI:
• https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2018.214
• In-game processing: reprojected and resampled to match the world grid, cached for fast lookup.

Terrain Tiles (global DEM tiles)

• Terrain Tiles (AWS Open Data Registry / Mapzen Jord)
• https://registry.opendata.aws/terrain-tiles
• Source attributions for Terrain Tiles:
• ArcticDEM terrain data: DEM(s) were created from DigitalGlobe, Inc. imagery and funded under National Science Foundation awards 1043681, 1559691, and 1542736.
• Australia terrain data (c) Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) 2017.
• Austria terrain data (c) offene Daten Osterreichs - Digitales Gelandemodell (DGM) Osterreich.
• Canada terrain data contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence - Canada.
• Europe terrain data produced using Copernicus data and information funded by the European Union - EU-DEM layers.
• Global ETOPO1 terrain data U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
• Mexico terrain data source: INEGI, Continental relief, 2016.
• New Zealand terrain data Copyright 2011 Crown copyright (c) Land Information New Zealand and the New Zealand Government (All rights reserved).
• Norway terrain data (c) Kartverket.
• United Kingdom terrain data (c) Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2015. All rights reserved.
• United States 3DEP (formerly NED) and global GMTED2010 and SRTM terrain data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Open-Meteo (weather)

• Weather data provided by Open-Meteo.com.
• https://open-meteo.com/
• License: CC BY 4.0
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Credit: "Weather data by Open-Meteo.com".
• https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.7970649