Terraforming the Web
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Another use of procedural textures is in creating
interactive shared worlds.
When you click on the link to the left,
you will see another project at our lab at NYU.
Here I implemented a procedural planet in Java.
You can spin the planet, zoom in and out, and see
various landmasses and islands.
The land height and the various features (snow, clouds, etc),
are all derived from a fractal sum of noise.
Because I can't render the planet in true real-time in Java 1.1, I developed a progressive rendering technique, in which the image "develops" over a number of seconds, but enough is available immediately to permit interactive navigation. |