On the 30th of September, 2007, I started a silly little test project to play with terrain generation and OpenGL. In typical fashion I got bored after a few days and let it slide, but I came back today and kept fiddling.
When I’d left it I’d just enabled lighting, but hadn’t provided any normals so non-too-surprisingly it wasn’t in fact lit, in the layman sense, and was in fact very dark (since for all I know the default normals had my terrain upsidedown). Anyway, computing the normals was a big and scary and terrifying and surprisingly simple task. It might not be optimal, dunno… nothing about this app is – dynamic data generation and immediate mode for teh win! – but it does work, and two decades of computing evolution have empowered me with a GPU powerful enough to render it in real time. In another decade or two those crazy GPU architects might have added room for a sky as well… 😜
Anyway, I added QT movie output – kudos to QTKit for its sweet, sweet simplicity – which took roughly three orders of magnitude less time than the rest of the thing combined. [[ Why is there no gluPackingFoam?!? WTF? 😆 ]]
Behold, in all its monochrome glory! Bask in its shininess! And fear the day I add texturing!
Though in seriousness I may well pursue this further, as I’d intended… I do have plans for this beyond wasting copious GPU potential… we shall see.
