documenting progress as such..

"equirectangular" projection commonly used for spherical height fields in ray tracing.

mapped to 4096 by 2048.. one octave takes my 1.6g about 11 seconds..
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proof of sphericality - imported to pov-ray, map_type 1
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8 octaves took 60-70 seconds. should i ever release this as an app, preinstallation requirements will include a bong (which i do not have) because there's no bloody way anyone's sticking around for it to finish otherwise.
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currently depending on manual editing to inhibit continents being a bunch of windy lines. considering a voronoi type process to define plates. i'd like to try an evolutionary algorithm that rotates the plates and/or produces aggregation or what have you. deliberating how involved i want to get considering the research.. fishing for a simpler solution (which could resolve to manual editing..)