Parameterized and Dynamic Generation of an Infinite Virtual Terrain with Various Biomes using Extended Voronoi Diagram

The paper describes and extensively evaluates a new method for the parameterized and intelligent generation of an infinite environment including various biomes in a virtual 3D space defined by the user. The biomes might be generated with different set of textures and by using different formulas to form shape of the landscape. Despite different shapes they still blend smoothly between each other. To achieve this goal Gaussian blur and Voronoi diagram algorithms are used. To enable additional parameterization for biomes placement the standard Voronoi algorithm is extended by including cell change along an axis and dispersion of Voronoi cells. Applying latitude into terrain type produces more realistic results. An entire terrain is generated on the CPU using a separate thread to eliminate stuttering during calculations and then the data is sent to the GPU in order to draw it. It forces reducing amount of data as much as possible, because data must be sent through the graphical bus. The tests have been performed by setting up a sample terrain and performing basic actions on this terrain like moving or rotating to gather frame times. The results showed that although the method demands much memory it is efficient and suitable for the real-time processing.