Tile Based Procedural Terrain Generation in Real-Time
Faculty of Computing, Blekinge Institute of Technology, SE-371 79 Karlskrona, Sweden
Blekinge Institute of Technology, 2014
@article{grelsson2014tile,
title={Tile Based Procedural Terrain Generation in Real-Time},
author={Grelsson, David},
year={2014}
}
CONTEXT: Procedural Terrain Generation refers to the algorithmical creation of terrains with limited or no user input. Terrains are an important piece of content in many video games and other forms of simulations. OBJECTIVES: In this study a tile-based approach to creating endless terrains is investigated. The aim is to find if real-time performance is possible using the proposed method and possible performance increases from utilization of the GPU. METHODS: An application that allows the user to walk around on a seemingly endless terrain is created in two versions, one that exclusively utilizes the CPU and one that utilizes both CPU and GPU. An experiment is then conducted that measures performance of both versions of the application. RESULTS: Results showed that real-time performance is indeed possible for smaller tile sizes on the CPU. They also showed that the application benefits significantly from utilizing the GPU. CONCLUSIONS: It is concluded that the tile-based approach works well and creates a functional terrain. However performance is too poor for the technique to be utilized in e.g. a video game.
July 9, 2014 by hgpu
