We gave our DEM to somebody to convert into Minecraft but I can see that this one is not from our DEM. Having it in Minecraft has its pro's and con's but one of the pro's is that you have the editor for the world as part of the mechanism to view it. So anybody can pile in and modify it and improve it.

Our approach was more to generate the base map and then let other people model some of the landmarks like Isengard and the black gate etc and then put them into the map later. Somebody did an absolutely amazing 3D model of Minas Tirith but then it got abandoned about the time that we released the base map. So ours never really got any interesting buildings for it.

Also, in Minecraft you have the world in 3D not just 2.5D DEM style. So you can have caves and the underground parts which make up a lot of the story.

We hooked up with the guys from Outerra which made this amazing world viewer and so there exists a demo where you can run the world in 3D.
https://forum.outerra.com/index.php?topic=1491.0
Some great videos were made for youtube like say:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLHHS5Q_m0g

Outerra does a great job of filling in biome detail and fractal landscaping. But the downside is that it was quite difficult to import 3D models into it at the time. So end of the day, nobody made any 3D models for Outerra and put them in.

Since then, we have lost the very final DEM created for it but have one near the end of the development but the rivers have got this large negative offset which was used by Outerra to make the water effect. So the one on this guild is likely to be the last ever version and this is where it lives now. The one here is 1/3 resolution but I have the full res version of it locally.

Another interesting fact is that since ours was done in 2007 then I was on a machine where it took about 2 months to calculate the map. Then I upgraded to one which then took two weeks. Now my most recent machine can calculate it in about 16 hours.

I think the key to it all though is that you just have to keep going with it and try to get many people to get on board and help out. Its a big place to do all by yourself. Thats where Minecraft helps you out.