Alumnus Thijs van Stralen recreates Flux in Minecraft

Thijs van Stralen, now a Physics alumnus, suddenly found himself with a lot more free time during the Covid-19 period as he no longer had to travel to and from the university for two hours a day. He already enjoyed playing Minecraft in his spare time, but because of those extra hours, he came up with a fun idea: to recreate Flux, his program’s department building, in his favorite computer game.

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photo Thijs van Stralen

“Well, you’re stuck at home and it’s something to do,” he grins when asked why he started this project. He should be proud of that “something” because his creation really looks like Flux. It even includes small details inside the building and things in the surrounding area, like the bicycle parking and the field. “I first thought about the best way to approach this. I used Google Maps and Google Images for scale and the Street View feature also came in handy: apparently, someone once took shots of the inside of the building with a 360-degree camera!”

“And then I just started building. Adding to it every day.” He finds it difficult to estimate exactly how many hours went into it. “A wild guess: 100? In any case, it took me years, constantly adding to it bit by bit.” So is it really finished now? “Who knows? The outside is more or less finished: there are parking spaces, a bicycle parking facility and surrounding roads. But the inside is quite difficult to recreate in detail.” In addition to Flux, he also recreated the Auditorium - where he had most of his lectures - in Minecraft. “Both the inside and outside including parking are mostly finished, but there’s still some work to be done.”

In Minecraft, you can play with other people in the same area, but you can also share your build in a different way. That is what Van Stralen did, via a forum of sorts. “There, I made both Flux and the Auditorium available for download to anyone who would like to install it in their own Minecraft world.” In case you have never played Minecraft before but have gotten curious about it, Van Stralen can put your mind at ease: “It’s a relatively simple computer game that doesn’t require any programming knowledge. It’s basically building with blocks, but on the computer.”

More campus buildings?

Building Flux and Auditorium was just “for fun”. Will Van Stralen recreate any more buildings? “I don’t think so. But I just finished my master’s program and I do want to take a PhD here.” If he ends up working in another building perhaps then it might just happen...

It turns out there is also another group that is recreating the entire campus: Panki. They have also come a long way already and have their own Discord server.

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