This is interesting but its not the way GTS is doing things. GTS is a physics sim. Very simple thermal / fluid dynamics with some vegetation heuristics. It runs everything together all at the same time. Most apps and this paper talk of algorithms that are used in isolation - like finding the pit fill, then using that information to jump to the result that you would have got if you had poured water in until it overflowed. It would be two orders of magnitude faster but it would not have calculated all the in between stuff and the other non water effects at the same time. There was a training video about somewhere that showed Geo Control doing this sort of thing. I cant find a link to it now tho.

Its very probable that to get a result on a terrain the size of MeDem then you would have to do these techniques. Maybe the way I am doing it would take just too long. The thing is I can't see this algorithm doing rivers or working out how much sediment went into the lakes etc. It is more likely the way you would need to use to sort out the large scale pooling of water tho.

The MeDem web site is down. Its been down for a while now after it got hacked and was temporarily a phishing portal. I know Monks is still doing a bit on the mountains and I am still working at GTS. I want to be able to make MeDem type terrains even if I make something other than the ME landscape with it. I would like a generic large terrain just for general RPG use. I could probably do what I want right now but the ME group have much more specific requirements and also need to keep the resulting terrain strictly to the reference map. Thats the main problem, creating automated terrain that has to fit exactly to a ref map made by somebody who freely admitted that it was drawn for effect rather than accurate geography.