This short demo uses Simplex Noise both on the CPU and GPU to procedurally generate terrain. Everything in the scene is created at run time – no models are loaded in at all. The scene was rendered using OpenGL, with lighting, material and multi-texturing effects applied with GLSL shaders, using a simple but flexible modular framework I built throughout the project.
Simplex Noise is Ken Perlin’s updated version of Perlin noise. While generally less well known, it has a several advantages over classic Perlin Noise, such as being visually isotropic, being faster to calculate at higher dimensions and having a lower computational complexity in general, with far fewer multiplications required. In common with Perlin Noise, Simplex noise will produce the same output given the same input values, and by considering functions, such as taking the absolute values of the noise, a range of effects can be created.
A key feature I’m currently working is to implement water similar to my DirectX demo and perhaps introduce a procedurally generated skybox.
All source code for the project can be found here. You will need Visual Studio 2008+ and the tr1 extension from Microsoft to compile the application.
