Minecraft may be practical, but its simple visuals can also be, for some folks, a bit gross. Which is why things like Chunky exist, to help make blocky maps beautiful.
Here’s what a “realistic” map looks like in vanilla Minecraft:
It looks like Civilization II with the UI turned off.
Here, though, Darastlix has shared an image of the same map, only this time it’s been run through Chunky, a tool that can render Minecraft maps and make them look like this:
Gorgeous.
Note that this isn’t a tool for playing Minecraft. Chunky takes map files and “renders” them, which means crunching the map and giving the blocks a more natural appearance. It can take hours to process a single image like this, and it can only handle vanilla Minecraft terrain blocks (no players, mobs, etc), so it’s mostly just a tool for making very pretty wallpaper.