Minecraft Millport

An immersive, large-scale virtual field course for zoology students.

Minecraft Millport is a collaboration with NeuronSafari

It gives students experience with fieldwork in a field like no other. Check out these articles:

Minecraft Millport takes place on Dumbrae Island, a 1:25 scale modification of Puerto Rico with four working beaches that vary in exposure:

Tutorial Island Introduces the students to the local flora and fauna, and gets them used to the controls:

Millport town contains a central transportation hub, and social spaces:

A flight though the hub

Beaches contain 100's of animals both on the surface and within rock pools

A flight across Clashfarland Beach

Data has been synthesised and inserted into the game: turtle size and distribution is gaussian, diversity in rock pools is poisson. Special tools, such as the carrot-on-a-stick allow students to extract data from entities

The Eco Lab allows students to study behaviour: food choice or responses to temperature gradients

TrapCams capture wildlife venturing onto the beach, while weather stations allow the collection of temperature variation data

End of Course Class picture, Field Zoology 2021

This article was published on 2025-05-14