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By Jason Kottke
Hunter Loftis has built a terrain rendering engine in only 130 lines of Javascript. Here's what the output looks like:
You can try it out here...reload to get new landscapes. Callum Prentice built an interactive version. This obviously reminds me of Vol Libre, a short film by Loren Carpenter from 1980 that showcased using fractals to generate terrain for the first time.
Hunter Loftis has built a terrain rendering engine in only 130 lines of Javascript. Here's what the output looks like:
Programmers tend to be lazy (I speak from experience), and one nice side effect of laziness is really brilliant ways to avoid work. In this case, instead of spending mind-numbing hours manually creating what would likely be pretty lame rocky surfaces, we'll get spiritual and teach the computer what it means to be a rock. We'll do this by generating fractals, or shapes that repeat patterns in smaller and smaller variations.
I don't have any way to prove that terrain is a fractal but this method looks really damn good, so maybe you'll take it on faith.
I don't have any way to prove that terrain is a fractal but this method looks really damn good, so maybe you'll take it on faith.
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