Minecraft Earth showcased at Apple's WWDC 2019 by Mojang

On Monday, Mojang showcased Minecraft Earth during a WWDC 2019 keynote. It was an impressive affair with Mojang employees first making adjustments to a virtual castle before stepping into a life-size Minecraft environment. Deciding to do a little digging, they find treasure and trouble in the form of enemies.

Minecraft is a sandbox game in which players are free to build all sorts of structures and then proceed to explore the world in search of resources and treasure. The game's blocky nature is intentional, allowing players to literally use building blocks to give their imagination form.

Minecraft Earth follows the same rules, only this time it is played in AR. Unlike Pokémon Go where players interact with in-game creatures and small hotspots, Minecraft Earth will allow creations to span vast spaces which players can then interact with. This stands to blow all other existing AR video games out of the water in terms of scope and creativity.

The demo was played using the iPhone and iPad as an interface but the game will also be available on Android at release.

What the most impressive thing about the dem was how one employee could be seen standing with the AR objects behind him and not in front or through him. It was a wonderful demonstration of real-time occlusion (virtual objects being able to recognise real-world objects and work around them). This was probably iOS occlusion at work and may also be part of the reason why Microsoft chose to showcase the game at WWDC. 

However, with all this immersion comes to the risk of injury, damage to property and trespassing. Microsoft has promised to take these issues into consideration during development but how they will achieve this is anyone's guess.

The free-to-play game will be released sometime in 2019 but a closed beta will be available in summer to gamers aged 18 and above.

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