Comparative Analysis of Procedural Planet Generators
Manuel Zechmann, Helmut Hlavacs
TL;DR
The paper tackles real-time procedural planet generation in games by presenting two distinct generators implemented in Godot: a Simple Planet (FBM with Perlin Noise) and a Minecraft-inspired Planet (layered noise), both featuring a quadtree-based LOD, mesh generation strategies, and 64-bit precision to handle planetary-scale geometry. It details the implementation, including heightmap generation, biome/coloring strategies, shaders for water and lava at high LODs, and environmental elements like trees, sky, and atmosphere, all integrated within a real-time framework. A comparative user study (N=15) evaluates immersion, exploration, realism, and controls against two public reference projects, revealing that the custom generators generally outperform the references with MP offering the strongest exploration and terrain realism, albeit with longer loading times. These findings underscore the viability and design trade-offs of real-time procedural planets in modern engines, informing future work on fidelity-performance balance and user-perceived realism in spherical terrains.
Abstract
This paper presents the development of two distinct real-time procedural planet generators within the Godot engine: one employing Fractal Brownian Motion (FBM) with Perlin Noise, and another adapting Minecraft-inspired layered noise techniques. We detail their implementation, including a quadtree-based Level of Detail (LOD) system and solutions for planetary mesh generation. A comparative user study (N=15) was conducted where participants explored unique instances generated by our two algorithms alongside two existing procedural planet projects.