Every Minecraft Far Lands, Ever.

Every Minecraft Far Lands, Ever.

The Far Lands are a phenomenon of Minecraft  world generation that occur 12 and a half   million blocks away from spawn. There’s  the Far Lands, the Farther Lands,   the Fartherer Lands… and the Farthest Lands,  along with corner variations for all of them,   and they all occur for distinctly  different, but similar reasons.

The Far Lands haven’t always looked like this  though. If we remove the fix that got rid of   the Far Lands in Minecraft Java Beta 1.8,  and use the Cubic Chunks mod to remove the   games depth and height limits entirely, we can  encounter the Sky Far Lands, the Void Far Lands,  

And every combination within. We’ll get to  that. This already seems like quite a lot,   and well… it is… but that’s what I’m  here for. Later on I’ll explain why the   Far Lands happen, but for now, let’s  get started with the first Far Lands.

We need to rewind the clocks all the way back  to February 27th, 2010. This is the very first   version of Minecraft to have infinite  terrain generation, but as you can see,   this terrain is a lot more basic than what we  have today. If you were to try and travel to  

The Far Lands in this version, you would  encounter a wide array of visual glitches   not all that dissimilar to what I showed off in  this video. But thanks to a mod provided by RVH,   we can just get rid of these problems so  I can get on with the video. Minecraft’s  

First ever Far Lands appear over 33.5  million blocks away from the spawn point. These Stone Wall Far Lands have a little  bit of variation from world to world. They   can generate as a solid wall, they can have  these spikes that oscillate every 4 blocks,  

Or the whole thing can be recessed  by 4 blocks, giving way to a thin,   but very long chasm going all the way down  to the bottom of the world. Once you go past   these initial 4 blocks, the whole thing is  one big solid never ending field of stone,  

And the corner Far Lands within this version  are also just stone. This specific version of   Minecraft has no cave or ore generation, but the  two versions of InfDev that came right after this   did re-introduce those elements, and that does  affect how the Far Lands look. It’s kinda weird.

Two weeks later on March 27th, Minecraft’s  terrain generation would fundamentally change   from the classic style of old, to an all new world  generation system. But this is not the terrain of   Minecraft Alpha. This terrain generation had a  much thicker hill structure, and it had a Far  

Lands shape entirely unique to it. This was  also the version of Minecraft that moved the   Far Lands from 33.55 million down to 12.55 million  blocks. The next major change to Far Lands terrain   happened on April 20th, 2010, and gave it the  shape that I know you’re all familiar with.

I want to start off this section with something  that I’ve never properly explained before. Why   are the Far Lands shaped like this? Well, I  finally understand it, so let’s break it down.   The Minecraft overworld surface is dominantly  shaped using a pair of 2d perlin noise maps  

Called “low noise” and “high noise”. These are  then blended together using a third noise map   called “selector noise”, with its purpose being to  JUST to blend the other two together. I feel like   this is intuitively difficult to understand,  so let’s see it visually. In front of us is  

A “from the side” two dimensional slice of a  Minecraft world. To make this as easy as possible,   let’s crank up the factor, or scale slider on  both of them. Heh, it already kind of looks   like the Far Lands. Now, watch what happens when  I change the period slider for either of them,  

Which is stretching and squeezing that noise-map.  Now, it’s visually obvious that there are two   noise-maps, because it’s easy to tell them  apart. Okay, let’s keep one of them stretched,   one of them squeezed, and then change the  offset slider for “selector” noise. Now can  

You see what’s going on? Selector noise takes  both of them, and blends them together. As you   might have intutively gathered, the shape  of the Far Lands happen when this factor   scale goes wildly out of control within the  range of a single Minecraft block. But, why?

Do you remember this image from earlier? It’s  a noise-map with a bunch of arrows on top of   it. But these arrows are how the noise map itself  forms. The arrows start out as points on a grid,   and the underlying math determines where they  point. On average, they point towards areas  

Of “more white”. White means land, black means  air, and a perfect gray is where that transition   happens. Well, deep within Minecraft’s code  lies an equation that aids in smoothing it   out a little. And part of how that equation is  formed is by taking any given terrain coordinate,  

With its decimal point, minus that same terrain  coordinate, but with the decimal rounded off.   This is ALWAYS supposed to equal a value between 0  and 1. But there’s a problem. This left number is   a floating point number, which effectively has  no limit, and this right number is an integer,  

Which maxes out at 2.147 billion. When this value  maxes out, it doe not change anymore. So then,   what happens if you were to do this minus  this? You would get a number that is much   higher than 1. And when that happens, the  scale of Minecraft’s terrain, does, this.

Yeah, when Minecraft’s terrain exceeds 12.55  million blocks, that first equation is able to   escape the safe zone of 0 to 1, which then gets  raised to the power of 5, and it causes the scale   of Minecraft’s terrain noise to become effectively  infinite, at least within the boundaries of a  

Minecraft world. Next question. Why are the  Far Lands tunnel shaped? Simple. The equation   that calculates Minecraft’s final noise map gets  locked to a static, unchanging value along your   direction of travel, so, it no longer even really  resembles a noise-map, and only changes along the  

Axis perpendicular to the Far Lands. Since this  value doesn’t change as you travel deeper into   the Far Lands, we get tunnels. But what happens  when both the x and z coordinates exceed 12.55   million blocks? Well, as I’m sure you’re all  familiar with, we get, the corner Far Lands.

Welcome to the Stack. The Corner Far Lands. A  scene perhaps more mysterious than the Edge Far   Lands. How do we even go about explaining why  these are shaped the way that they are? Well,   if you’ve kept up with me thus far, it’s  quite simple. Within the corner Far Lands,  

The low and high noise maps are frozen in  a fixed state, but selector noise is not. To make this as easy as possible to understand,   I’m gonna take a shortcut. When Minecraft’s  selector noise breaks 1.004 billion blocks out,   this is what the terrain will look like  when the blending it provides no longer  

Occurs at all. Minecraft is just made up of  never-ending, never changing flat layers. Let’s use this specific layer at the end of  the Corner Far Lands as an example. To my left,   the layer is just never ending and flat, and to  my right, that very same layer is still there,  

But it’s all broken up, and that’s solely  because of selector noise. Whenever a   distinct layer drops down, or cuts off, whether  that be like this, or the plateau like hills,   that is selector noise doing its thing, and that  is why the Stack takes on the shape that it does.

In order to move on with this Far Lands iceberg,  we need to back up. Remember before when I   mentioned that Minecraft’s selector noise, the  one that blends things together, breaks at 1.004   billion blocks. Welcome to the Farther Lands,  the next tier of this iceberg. Just as the low  

And high noise breaking causes the Far Lands,  the next noise map to break in this chain of   insanity is the selector noise, meaning, the  low and high noise can no longer be blended   together anymore. But, why 1 billion blocks  out? Well, just as those two increased at a  

Frequency of 171.103 per block, selector  noise only increases by 2.138 per block,   so, here we are. The Farther Lands are the  last unique set that we can witness within   the boundaries of a Minecraft world… or at  least, that’s what they want you to think.

Minecraft in its unmodified form has two world-gen  limitations that WE need to break in order to go   further down this iceberg. The first is the  height and depth limit. Long story short,   Minecraft world chunks for versions 1.2  through 1.17 are 16 by 16 by 256 blocks,  

And are horizontally stitched together as the  world generates. This works just fine for the   limitations that we just covered…  but what about the limitations that   occur vertically? 256 blocks of height is  just not gonna cut it anymore. Thankfully,  

There exists a mod that changes Minecraft’s world  chunks to generate instead as 16 block cubes,   and allows for them to be stitched together  both horizontally, and now, vertically, without   limitation. While Minecraft’s low and high noise  break at 12.55 million blocks horizontally, they  

Break at double that distance vertically, making  way for the Sky Far Lands, and the Void Far Lands. This is where the Far Lands iceberg begins  to lose sunlight. One key item to note is   that the entrance to these Far Lands are not  visibly stretched like they are for the Edge  

Far Lands, and the reason for that lies in where  these Far Lands occur. They’re twice as far away,   meaning that the low and high noise scale at half  the frequency vertically, meaning, the Edge Far   Lands stretch vertically, and these new ones do  not. If your brain isn’t as fried as mine was  

Researching this video, then you may have already  realized that if we can have a Far and Farther   Lands, that means we also have to have vertical  variations for both of those as well. Here’s some   more food for thought. What happens if you’re in  the Corner Far Lands, and you move vertically all  

The way through the Void Far Lands and into the  Void Farther Lands. Well, you would be in the   Corner Far Void Farther Lands. I don’t know how  else to describe it, but I do know how to show  

It. This tesseract looking thing is a 3D outline  representation of the entire Far Lands stack. The   inner glowstone portion is meant to represent  Minecraft’s normal terrain. When we enter this   green bit, that’s me representing the Edge Far  Lands. If I go up a layer, Edge Sky Far Lands.  

One more up? Edge Far Sky Farther Lands.  Okay, okay, this is getting out of hand.   WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE ARE TWO SETS OF FAR LANDS  BEYOND THIS? The FARTHERER AND FARTHEST LANDS? So, here we are, at the last two set of  Far Lands that we can witness within the  

Boundaries of a 32-bit Minecraft world. In order  to actually get to them, we’re gonna have to use   1.12’s customized worlds feature, because these  Far Lands actually appear so far away that they   are multiple quadrillions of blocks away, which is  far beyond our 2.147 billion limit. The Fartherer  

And Farthest Lands appear at the location where  low and high noise maps break, but instead at   their 64-bit equivalent distances. If we take  the highest 64 bit number, and divide it by the   highest 32-bit number, and then multiply that by  where the Far and Farther Lands are, that is where  

The Fartherer and Farthest Lands will respectively  appear. Whether or not these Far Lands would be   noticeable in-game if you could even travel to  those coordinates without mods is a matter of   debate, and unfortunately, it’s difficult for me  to really explain what exactly is going on here.

That’s where this whole discussion kinda falls  apart, and also changes in scope. If I wanted   to continue on from this point on, I would need  to use a pretty game-changing mod that allows for   us to travel beyond Minecraft’s 32-bit limit, and  into the 64-bit range of coordinates, but I have  

A personal reservation with that. This mod really  is game-changing. It radically alters Minecraft’s   code so much to even allow for world generation  out that far. Opening up that Pandora’s Box,   and diving into all of those limitations would  honestly have to be its own video. For now,  

Given that we’ve hit our theoretical limit  for the time being, let’s take yet another   dive into the bowels of insanity, and check out  a bunch of Far Lands variations that I haven’t   really given the spotlight all that much up  to this point. If you’ve enjoyed this video,  

Please consider subscribing, because that’ll  do it for my commentary, for now. I hope you   all enjoyed this video, my name is AntVenom, and I  bid you all farewell. Thanks so much for watching.

This is the deepest dive into the Minecraft Far Lands I’ve ever done! 😉
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The Far Lands are a phenomenon of Minecraft world generation that occur 12 and a half million blocks away from spawn. There’s the Minecraft Far Lands, the Minecraft Farther Lands, the Minecraft Fartherer Lands… and the Minecraft Farthest Lands, along with corner variations for all of them, and they all occur for distinctly different, but similar reasons. Today, we’re gonna check them out!

RVH’s InfDev 2010-03-13 Mod
» https://github.com/rvhproductions/files/raw/main/rvh-minecraft-mods/inf-313-chatcommands/inf-313-chatcommands-new-2.0.1.zip

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