You know, as someone who has lived in the UK for pretty much all of their life, I've always wondered what things are like in New York City. From overseas, all we get are little insights into what the city is like from media like Home Alone 2 and Spide-Man, but you can't beat the real deal.

The problem is, tickets from the UK to New York City are pretty expensive, and that's not including any hotel fees. Fortunately, someone designed a tool called Arnis that lets you import open-source map data into Minecraft, so now I can save a ton of money on travel and just walk around a digital simulacrum of the city that never sleeps. So, pack your bags, because we're going on a trip to New York City!

Turns out, New York City is really big

Who knew?

In my bid to adventure in The Big Apple, I opened up Arnis, scrolled over to America, and drew a big import box over the entirety of NYC. I didn't even have time to click the import button before Arnis took me aside and calmly explained to me that perhaps I had misunderstood just how big NYC is and that going ahead would take up a lot of computational power.

So, I clicked import anyway. And Arnis crashed.

I eventually whittled down my selection until Arnis and I found a middle ground. I wouldn't import all of NYC, but I would grab the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, and Central Park. Arnis was a little uneasy still, but the import went without a hitch. And with what done, we can finally do some sightseeing!

The Statue of Liberty: strangely AWOL

I guess she had too much liberty

First things first, it was time to check out Lady Liberty herself. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the statue is based in water; however, Arnis had filled in the area with grass, which looked a little weird. Even stranger was the lack of the lady herself, with an empty plinth standing where she should be. Still, it looked like it got the "starburst" shape down, and the insides looked alright, if a little sparse.

Two more sightseeing opportunities to go to. Onward!

The Empire State Building: suitably big

It wasn't perfect, but it was impressive

Next up on the docket was the Empire State Building. It didn't look one-to-one with how it appears in real life, but at least it got the scale down. This thing was huge and was pretty easy to spot amongst the city streets.

I was beginning to see the real value of a tool like Arnis. Sure, it's not going to take the map data and make a perfect recreation of what you feed it: I don't think the data it draws from has enough information to do that. However, it was an excellent way to quickly generate a realistic city you could use for a specific use case. Sure, this doesn't look like the Empire State Building, but it has done 99% of the work of making the perfect office building for a city roleplay, for instance.

Central Park: full of strange artifacts

Where Arnis broke down

Unfortunately, generating Central Park wasn't so smooth. It managed to nail the buildings, with the museum and the zoo appearing just fine, but the park itself was strewn with all kinds of weird elements. Random logs and scaffold blocks were scattered around open areas, and everything was placed in a haphazard manner. It was difficult for me to understand what I was really looking at half the time.

Visit a hand-crafted New York City to sate your wanderlust

It's a lot more fun

My experience with Arnis was a lot of fun, and I can see how someone can use it to generate a realistic city in seconds. If you were to import it, tidy it up, and present it as a generic city for a zombie survival or a roleplay session, it could save you a ton of time. However, for the sake of sightseeing, it's not ideal.

Fortunately, I discovered the BuildTheEarth project, which has its own team working on building all of New York City by hand. I grabbed Minecraft version 1.20.1, connected to NYC.BuildTheEarth.net, and got exploring. And the wonderful builds sated my wanderlust far better than the Arnis generation.

The BuildTheEarth project isn't perfect: some bits aren't started, others aren't done, and others still are 100% completed but outdated. However, the bits that were finished looked amazing, and I had a wonderful time milling around and looking at all the cool architecture.

Arnis is a fantastic tool for quick and easy world-generation

Would I recommend using Arnis to generate your hometown for a nostalgic trip down memory lane? Probably not. While it is possible to do so, the end result doesn't feature enough detail to really make an impact. Would I recommend using Arnis to whip up a quick city, town, or establishment for the sake of your own worldbuilding? Definitely. It saves a ton of time building and gives you quick results that you can tweak to your liking. As such, if you want to do some sightseeing, the human touch cannot be beaten; if you just want to generate a city, Arnis is your best bet.