River Networks for Instant Procedural Planets

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@ARTICLE{derzapf2011proc,
    author = {Derzapf, Evgenij and Ganster, Bj{\"o}rn and Guthe, Michael and Klein, Reinhard},
     pages = {2031--2040},
     title = {River Networks for Instant Procedural Planets},
   journal = {Computer Graphics Forum},
    volume = {30},
    number = {7},
      year = {2011},
     month = sep,
  abstract = {Realistic terrain models are required in many applications, especially in computer games. Commonly,
              procedural models are applied to generate the corresponding models and let users experience a wide
              variety of new environments. Existing algorithms generate landscapes immediately with view-dependent
              resolution and without preprocessing. Unfortunately, landscapes generated by such algorithms lack
              river networks and therefore appear unnatural. Algorithms that integrate realistic river networks
              are computationally expensive and cannot be used to generate a locally adaptive high resolution
              landscape during a fly-through. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm to generate realistic
              river networks. Our procedural algorithm creates complete planets and landscapes with realistic 
              river networks within seconds. It starts with a coarse base geometry of a planet without further
              preprocessing and user intervention. By exploiting current graphics hardware, the proposed algorithm
              is able to generate adaptively refined landscape geometry during fly-throughs.}
}