Heightfield erosion in v2.5

[fusi]

ive actually had a dabble in erosion algorithms in the past, never got to anything that could be called a good result (perhaps decent at a stretch) probably because i did it without doing any research :p what i did was literally simulate rain (well, a rather crude approximation) with sediment carry - i find that when you model at high intensity like this that the higher order features such as pools/lakes and flood plain meanders just 'appear' without any specific programming. it was horribly slow though as you can imagine.

just my 2p

[monks]

i find that when you model at high intensity like this that the higher order features such as pools/lakes and flood plain meanders just 'appear' without any specific programming. it was horribly slow though as you can imagine.

Hi fusi, I'd say that's both an advantage and disadvantage. I think striking the balance between making the rivers go where you want and adding extra rivers in procedurally is tricky but doable. Either way it comes down to some kind of masking.

It looks like real time interactive rivers in games are definitely on the horizon. Howard Zhou posted this link on the TS to some Havok research.
http://wwwcg.in.tum.de/Research/data/GI2006talk.pdf

This looks good to me, as it is not entirely procedural- ie the underlying terrain needs to be set up with the right conditions to make the flow possible.

monks