Since 2011, Minecraft player KurtJMac has been documenting his journey to the sandbox game's legendary glitched outer reaches through an online video series called Far Lands or Bust. This week, KurtJMac achieved the last big milestone before the end, passing through the boundary that marks the final floating point error boundary.
In early versions of Minecraft: Java Edition, if you traveled far enough away from the starting position, you'd eventually reach a spot where the terrain generation glitched out and created strange worlds filled with impossible landscapes. The edge of the world became known as the Far Lands, and while the glitches that created those lands were patched out well before the 1.0 version of Minecraft first launched, the idea of the Far Lands became so legendary that it's been referenced as far afield as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
If you're familiar with the Far Lands, you likely know about the Far Lands or Bust series, a Twitch and YouTube broadcast documenting KurtJmac's journey to the edge of the world. With 12,550,821 blocks between the starting point and the Far Lands, there are thousands of hours of walking to be done, and KurtJMac uses each season of his series to raise a certain donation goal for charity before kicking off a new leg. As of May 2023 - the end of the season 10 - KurtJMac had traversed 7,396,358 blocks, or 58.9% of the journey.
Kurtjmac crosses 8,388,608 blocks, aka, the LAST floating point precision error in Minecraft, on his "Far Lands or Bust" journey!It's kind of surreal, given that this series has been going for over 13 years!He's live, experiencing it right now! Link in replies. pic.twitter.com/L5vPRlsfX1April 17, 2024
Now, KurtJMac crossed a particularly notable milestone. As you progress further from the start location, the game's old floating point precision errors - a programming issue far too complicated to fully explain here - cause movement to appear increasingly jittery at certain distance thresholds. As of this week, KurtJmac has crossed the last of those thresholds.
You can see the moment of discovery in this Twitch clip. KurtJMac moves some distance past the threshold before he pauses and realizes, "Something's changed." After wondering, "Is that just me?" he goes back to confirm the line where movement changes. "That's not so bad," KurtJMac says, despite the fact that he now appears to be jumping a full block forward at a time. That's not so bad at all; it seems like we're moving in slow motion."
Whenever KurtJMac reaches the Far Lands, he won't be the first player to do so. Several players have already completed the journey, including one in 2022 who spent 2,500 hours walking to the end only to immediately die. You can see a list tracking Far Lands journeys over at the Premium Minecraft Blog.
