mr. waldronate -

i don't really want to get into this, because there is obviously a great discrepancy between our eruditions and experience, which cannot be translated in the course of a forum discussion, so no slight if you choose not to respond.

my perlin uses a base array of 256 so i can index with unsigned chars for faster bicubic interpolation.

2d requires five bicubic interpolation operations, 3d requires 21.

to create a bicubic 2048 * 1536 2d height field of 8 octaves takes my 1.6g processor about 8 seconds, which is going to take 4 times longer with 3d. in comparison, wilbur is practically instantaneous.


audio is a competitive field, so i'm fairly confident regarding the efficiency of my operations.. (my algo may have some slack in it, but i doubt a critical amount) so i see the difference as possibly due to..

using the graphics device for math, which i have no experience with yet, and may be the key factor
using a lower res/octave for editing, perhaps keeping an edit map with is applied to a higher octave render at output
(i doubt it, but possibly using a lower than screen image resolution for data)
(also doubt it, possibly using a faster interpolation technique as perhaps the artifacts aren't so obvious in 3d)

in five syllables or less, why are you awesome?



OT:
for those interested or have input that may result in a more useful product, i very much enjoy algorithmic generation, and i believe what i'm driving towards is ~a more/fully automatic world generator, with minimal parameterisation and climate, road and political mapping, none of which will be particularly refined as i'm more interested in the practice, still, it's always nice to have something that isn't completely worthless at the end.