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Fractal Terrains - Jet Streams

BubbaBrownBubbaBrown
in Mapping with ProFantasy's Software
I was curious if there were any plans to implement some planetary jet stream calculations? The reason I ask this is because that while Fractal Terrains does an excellent job... there just are some parts that are a bit off. I think this stems from the static rainfall and temperature calculations. Simply put, stuff needs to be stirred up. The rainfall calculations are straight up and straight down, which makes formation of inland deserts impossible without manual tweaking. Also some areas which should be getting chill treatment are fairly temperate and places that should be baking are just as temperate. I'm just wagering a guess, but it seems that thermal and precipitation target zones are also the sources. It might be interesting to calculate a few vectors in order to displace the heat and water, with an exponential drop off, to different areas. Also calculate the effects of terrain height in order to increase or decrease thermal and precipitation drains. This way more arid areas can be rain shadowed by mountainous zones. I can't figure out the nicest way to do these jet stream calculations, since they take into account many factors such as water and land body shapes and locations, thermal capacity, and atmospheric pressure zones.

So, any possible variations of the theme making their way to future versions?
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Comments

  • jslaytonjslayton Moderator, ProFantasy Mapmaker
    Such features are on the wish list, but there are other features ahead of them for FT3. CC3 compatibility, for example...
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  • 2 months later
  • b1_b1_
    Well, until they incorporate prevailing winds and its effects FT is really only good for land-mass outlines. At the moment it's producing landscapes for planets with no axial spin. Please start twirling those planets. Could they not just incorporate a rate of spin parameter and a direction of spin parameter, then the prevailing winds are the opposite of this, and where the prevailing winds hit mountains there are forests, on the other side there's dry terrain, and where there's land with no oceans for X distance from where the prevailing winds are coming from, there's also dry terrain?

    Some kind of attempt to simulate plate tectonics would be nice also for some more realistic mountain ranges.

    Are there any fractal terrain generators out there that follow the rules at bit more closely (see the Wiki page for World Building: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldbuilding), or is Fractal Terrains Pro the best we've got so far? I'm happy to mold and edit, I just wondered if there are any that do it all yet.
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  • BidmaronBidmaron Traveler
    Winds are very complex, and they are not opposite planetary spin. They vary by latitude and hemisphere. Surface winds are different than the jet stream, and in many places 'prevailing' is just the average direction of winds, with the daily direction widely disparate from this average. You are asking Joe to develop models for something that don't exist right now (if they did, we'd have better weather predictions). That is not to say that he can't make something that's better than nothing, but people will never be completely satisfied because they will always input the real world and then ask Joe how come his program isn't predicting the Santa Anna (sp?) winds of California.

    Having said all that, I'm in the camp for having something, but let's just not expect too much.
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  • b1_b1_
    You are right. I've just been looking at Geoff's Climate Cookbook (http://www.compulink.co.uk/~morven/worldkit/climate.html), which explains it well. If FT could somehow incorporate those rules you might get something more realistic - easier said than done no doubt.

    In FT, I've been trying to create a planet with a Sahara desert and an Amazon jungle automatically, but to no avail so far. No matter how much randomising I set with 100cm/yr of rain no deserts appear, and no jungles with with 25cm/yr.

    I guess for me what's missing with FT is drama. Whenever I hit the button for a new world I hope there will be deserts butting up against jungles, abrupt mountain ranges unusually high, something surprising in the landscape, places where cultures might clash. With every new world that appears before me my mind starts to imagine the stories that go with the terrain, but at the moment those stories aren't that dramatic because all the terrain is the same or similar.
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