Comparison and some words

It's been a while since I typed more than 5 words, so I thought this might be a good time to give some more updates on the progress so far. The last few sessions I worked on the river Schelde. Also this turns out to be a huge job, since landscaping isn't that easy.
The steps I took:

1. Measure the distance between Rubens and the border of the river (which is called De Blauwe Steen, the blue stone) using Google Earth
2. Measure the distance between the front entrance of the Cathedral and the border of the river
3. Mark those two points with a beacon
4. Draw a line between those two points with stone 

This is the result:

To give you an idea: Rubens is at 279/203, the beacon is at -221/203, which means the distance between Rubens and the border of the river is 500 blocks.

The river itself is at that point about 363 meters HORIZONTALLY wide (so measured along the X-axis, not the straight width from bank to bank), according to Google Earth. This is a bit of a pity, because you cannot see 363m far in MC vanilla (unless you go higher, or you adjust your video settings). I can assure you, when you stand on the left bank (called Linkeroever) at that point, you can very clearly see the Cathedral. This is in fact one of my favorite views on the city.

Another awkward thing is the amount of work. All the jungle trees need to be cut/blown up/shred to pieces, the water level needs to be made equal (a huge job with buckets), the river must be at least 6 blocks deep, and I can assure you this is not simple for a river that is 360 blocks wide. Calculate quickly: 360 blocks wide * 6 blocks deep * 1500 blocks long for the significant part of the river = 3.240.000 blocks to remove. Ouch ...

Another thing I have been looking at is something to give me an idea on how accurate my work is. I found a great tool for this, CraftMaster. I still need to figure out what you can do with it, because it has tons of options, but I was already able to make a screenshot of the total. These are the AntwerpCraft version and the Google Earth version, side by side:

Some things you might immediately notice:

• IRL the Cathedral is not straight, but at an angle of about 10 degrees. Yeah, I know ... I so badly wanted to make it straight, because it looks sooo much nicer in MineCraft.
• In the MC version, there's a large grey strip running from the Groenplaats to the river Schelde. This is what I call Construction Boulevard. I want to outline the buildings as quickly as possible in this area, so I can start erecting more houses in the inner city, and walk from the Groenplaats to the Noorderterras (a nice panoramic terrace right beside the river).

Last thing worth mentioning is a new building I created on the Groenplaats, the old Postal Office, which is now called Mercado. Mercado is a brand new indoor marketplace for all kinds of exotic food. Here you see it, it's on the left:

The white modern building next to it is my old high school. At the ground floor, there's an entry to the metro station. The building on the right has offices on the ground floor, and apartments on all other floors. I once visited some friends in those apartments, nice places.

A full view

My favourite view in Antwerp and Minecraft

Yeah, finally got to the Pelgrimssraat. To be honest, I already did some building, just to get my favourite view in the whole of Antwerp, which is seeing the Cathedral when standing in the Pelgrimsstraat.

This is what it looks like in real life (Google Streetview):

It looks way better at night I must say, so I took a screenshot in Minecraft with the day as well as the night view:

Still needs some work, but I think it's already fantastic that the plan is coming together :-)

Nice total nightly overview ...

Screenshots of the Cathedral and the underground parking

The outside of the Cathedral

The inside ... so far ...

One by night

The parking lot under the Groenplaats

Latest screenshots

The Cathedral is almost finished on the outside:

and the thing I have been banging my head on lately, the Jan blomstraat:

As you can see, this street runs at an angle of about 45 degrees, which gives the following in MineCraft:

Yeah, I know, not really a house ...

Progress (2)

I will post some pictures later on, but I thought it might be good to give some more explanation on what I finished since last posts.

On the north side of the Groenplaats, you can already see that the Cathedral (Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal) was nearly finished. Well, in the pictures I will post later you will see that the exterior is done! Proud of it. 

Although there are some minor issues. I always use Google Maps or Google Earth. 

One of the strange things is that the roof next to the towers seems to go vertical, which seems extremely strange to me. But hey, since I don't have the money to look at it from a helicopter, I will have to do with whatever I've got, and that means: vertical roofs :-)

Another thing is that there's no vertical measurement tool in Google Earth. Of course, this is no real issue for the Cathedral, since I know it's 120 meters tall (the left tower anyway), but for other buidlings this might be a problem.

The most important thing of course is that it "feels" like the real deal, and that is definitely the case.

On the south side of the Groenplaats I've finished some more building, but I've temporarily put that on hold, since I noticed that I made quite some errors. I'll have to review those, and restart for instance the old post building (center south side). The building itself is already a serious challenge, because of the many minor details, but also the angle of the Pandstraat is a serious difficulty:

Angles Pandstraat and Groenplaats

It's about 195 degrees, which isn't that big, so that means shifting a block in the row every 6 block or so. Alsthe angle of the street on the sout side (blue line) poses the same challenge.

I also did a lot of landscaping, especially around the Cathedral (north and east), so I can continue on the buildings over there.

This brought me again to the Hilton hotel. Right now I'm working on the interior of the big meeting room of the Hilton, which is the big white structure on the roof, just to do something else for a change:

Big meeting room Hilton hotel

And after that, I think I'm going to finish the north wall of the Hilton, so that I can start completing the outside of the Grand Bazar Shopping center. The nice thing about that building is that it has four entrances, two big ones (red arrows), one small one that goes directly to Fnac, and one underground that connects to the metro (blue dotted line). 

Finishing this building means I would have finished a whole block, and  only leaves the Boerentoren (KBC building, finished in 1932 and at that time the biggest buidling in Europe) as important for the right feeling. The thing with the Boerentoren is that it also defines the skyline of the city, so it's really needed, but the building stands at almost an exact crooked angle (meaning 45-135-225-315 as opposed to 90-180-270-360), so this might turn out ugly, especially because it's an important one for the "feeling".