How does mine craft store the entire world inside a computer?

Question

Assuming there are 12 000 different block states this means that 14 bits are needed per block and hence one monecraft world needs 60 000 000 × 60 000 000 × 385 × 14 = 1.9404 × 10^19 bits or 2.425 billion Gibibytes. Where does all these data get stored?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

Only a small part of the world is generated when a map is first generated: the rest is only generated if the player walks close to that area.

As such, most of the possible world map would not be generated in a normal playthrough, so file size is rarely an issue.