I wrote a calculator that will tell you exactly what direction and how far to travel on long trips. Really useful when flying long distances in the End. And another calculator that will help you plan out angled walls or ramps as well as spacing out blocks.
Help
Archived post. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast.
Sort by:
Best
Open comment sort options
Best
Top
New
Controversial
Old
Q&A
I wanted to create the Direction Finder to help me when I was flying back to the portal when traveling across the void in the End. I was never sure exactly what angle to keep flying and always felt that I was wasting time not flying directly back to the main island. It can also be used in the other dimensions but traveling over hills and mountains will affect the overall travel and distance.
I initially wrote the Block Path calculator so I could place torches accurately on top of the bedrock in the Nether when I'm trying to lay out a direct path between some of my distant bases. But then I realized it could also be use to help figure out block placement for ramps or angled roads, roofs, or even to evenly space out lamp posts along an angled road. There is an option to use half slabs as well if you want smoother inclines.
This is my first time really writing something like this so let me know if you find any errors!
edit: just noticed that OMGcraft did a video about the direction finder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8xLxesnOg4
How did you calculate the angle? I've been playing around with one of these I wrote myself but keep getting bad/invalid/wrong angles coming out of it.
It just calculates the slope and length of a vector.
Edit: For the angle, it's a bit weird. You take the inverse tangent of (x2-x1)/(z2-z1) first, then if z is negative the result angle is the absolute angle you just calculated subtracted from 180, or just whatever you got if z is positive. Also, strangely, the angle is positive when x is negative and negative when x is positive.
Yes, I just did some google-fu to get the trigonometry required to find the angle based on two points. I think this is what I used as my main formula. https://gist.github.com/conorbuck/2606166
Thank you! That is useful. I've looked for something like this several times, when trying to connect stuff.
Let me know how it works for you!
Wow, cool! This will be super helpful!
That's great to hear, thanks!
Just out of curiosity, I entered the spawn coordinates on the demo picture and the coordinates for the Far Lands. This was the result. I got 8290803.1 minutes walking, or 15.993 years (15 years, 11 months, 27 days, 12 hours, 3 minutes, 8 seconds) of constant walking. Kurt J. Mac has a lot of walking to do, that's amazing.
However, if Beta 1.7.3 had the Elytra, it would take him between ~3.197 to ~6.324 years (3 years, 2 months, 10 days to 6 years, 3 months, 26 days) of straight flying to reach his destination.
haha, that's crazy! Really shows you have large these worlds are! And those are times for traveling across a flat solid world. It would probably take much longer with trees and mountains, and mobs, etc!
Does this work for all versions of the game (e.g. Java, Bedrock, Console Edition, etc.)? Or are there differences between those versions?
They were written for the Java version but I don't see why the Block Path tool wouldn't work for any version. Same goes for the Nether Calc on that page.
I'm not sure how other versions of MC handle listing the direction you are facing or even if you can see it at all. The distance results would still apply but I'm not sure about the angle results. The Potato pack would only be for the Java version - using Optifine.