Minecraft Vs. Terragen

[Upon Infinity]

I've been playing a bit of the Minecraft lately.  For those who don't know what Minecraft is, it is an open world sandbox game where the terrain is procedurally generated based off a randomized seed (sound familiar?).

As I was playing, I began to get a bit curious about the differences of how the terrains are created.  For example, Minecraft naturally produces (with an option to remove) caves, ravines, arches, etc.. With Terragen, these can be done, but only painstakingly, by manipulating the landscape and/or adding objects.  However, Minecraft also produces a lot of "flaws" in it's landscapes, as well (floating islands and such).

My question is: has Planetside tested different algorithms that would generate these types of features?  Did they get the same sorts of errors in the generation?  And is it possible to implement something similar into Terragen's landscape generator?

[Oshyan]

I believe Minecraft uses some kind of Voxel approach. It has some great capabilities, but also notable limits and memory challenges. Volumetric representations are very challenging for full world generation and rendering. Certainly we are interested in solving some of the bigger challenges with overhangs, caves, and general sculpting in Terragen, so we continue to investigate that. But I don't know that Minecraft will be much of an inspiration.

- Oshyan

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Iam for.