   White Paper: Procedural Terrain Generation With Fractional Brownian Motion
  Comments for the article White Paper: Procedural Terrain Generation With Fractional Brownian Motion
  I am a little confused by this article - especially given its presentation in the style of a research paper:a) It seems to me that there is no new work presented.b) The implementation of previous work is not particular optimal (among other considerations, blending can be done in many ways, which may be more realistic or work on older shader models).In short, apart from a nice GUI playground for simple fractal terrains, there isn't much here.   ;  yep, it's a pretty damned thin article...What it isn't missing though is a shameless plug for Intel's integrated graphics solutions such as the Intel® 965 Express Chipset and Mobile Intel® 965 Express Chipset family.[Edited by - Hodgman on January 22, 2008 11:21:26 PM];  it's the sequel to this;Quote:Original post by krezit's the sequel to thisWhich leads me to think that these need a more thorough review process ;)   ;  I came here to post that I appreciated seeing an article that felt tons less "advertisey" than the previous one but I guess I'm totally off-base here.   ;  Thank you for your comments and critique.  This was a fun beginner level piece to put together and hopefully a prelude to the more advanced and related topic referenced in the future work section.Regards,Jeff* Disclaimer * My comments reflect my own opinions and view points and do not reflect those of Intel Corporation or official statements made on its behalf.   ;Quote:Original post by Hodgmanyep, it's a pretty damned thin article...What it isn't missing though is a shameless plug for Intel's integrated graphics solutions such as the Intel® 965 Express Chipset and Mobile Intel® 965 Express Chipset family.While I will probably be in the ridiculous minority here, I'll point out that nobody complains when NVidia writes papers saying "The GeForce 8800 is capable of..." when talking about effects.  Same goes for ATI.Now, I have a general hatred of Intel integrated chipsets (they have caused me many a headache), but just because their product isn't what I would consider top-tier doesn't mean that they should be held to some sort of rule set that the other GPU manufacturers are.That said, this article IS pretty light on everything.  It's basically a bibliography, some screenshots, and some sample code, with bits of text as glue.Here's some (hopefully) constructive criticism for future articles:Generally, when I, personally, am reading an article, I'm reading it to learn the HOW, not the WHAT.  Even an overview of an algorithm would be better than "hey, we used this other guy's algorithm."  I don't want to have to look up your references to read about an algorithm, and I really, REALLY shouldn't have to look at code to find out what's going on.In other words, an article really needs to be more than a bibliography and some screenshots, with text tying it all together.  Really, the article itself should be self-contained within reason; you shouldn't have to reproduce the entirety of computer science literature to write about a topic, but you should explain (with text, not code) the concepts central to your article.  If, however, you're writing an article that assumes familiarity with an algorithm or a concept, feel free to state that up front, i.e. "This article assumes a familiarity with..."  That's better than letting the reader find out, much later, that intermediate knowledge about, say, perlin noise and fBm is a requirement to understand the article.In short:Actually describe, using words, details about the method being used.Do not rely on your sample code to provide implementation details; one shouldn't have to read code to understand an article.  If anything, it should be the other way around.State non-obvious assumptions as to the knowledge of the reader up-front.  Generally, this should be for concepts that are necessary for understanding the text, but lie outside of the scope of the article.Always provide sample hardware to your readers.Okay, I made that last one up.Josh   