P-152: Virtual World Concept Update 97: Fractal Terrain Generation Part 3

I am currently working on a concept for another attempt at getting spherical terrain working. I believe, as I said in previous posts, that the key is to use fractal midpoint displacement to generate the terrain, and to use a low-resolution heightfield for the initial terrain mesh. I can then use random numbers (based on a seed) to generate high-resolution quads at close range.

I am still unsure as to how to put all of this together, however.

Based on detailed research into the techniques used by the “Infinite Universe Engine”, I have come up with a basic strategy.

The general idea this time is to first generate a low resolution heightfield, at load time.

Then, every tick, I will create a new quadtree structure. At long view distances, I will sample the height field, and use it’s values to populate the quad tree.

As the player moves close to the planet, I will further subdivide the quadtree, and use the heightfields nodes as well as fractal midpoint displacement to generate child nodes.

I should end up with a dynamic Level of Detail system which will render nodes close to the player in high detail, and nodes further away in low detail.