Six worlds, already surveyed
The generator's parameter space is effectively infinite — every five-digit seed is a coordinate inside it. These six expeditions are charted positions we keep returning to. Each thumbnail is rendered live from its seed the moment this page loads: no images, only arithmetic. Select one and the stage above morphs into it.
How arithmetic becomes geography
Underneath every ridge on the stage is one function: seeded 2D simplex noise, worth about forty lines of code. Geography emerges from how you stack, bend and fold it. The three specimens below are computed live, pixel by pixel, from the same noise source as the terrain above.
Fractal layering
Fractional Brownian motion. One octave states the theme; each octave after restates it — twice the frequency, half the volume. Watch the field sharpen as layers accumulate: this loop is the Detail instrument.
Domain warping
Feed noise its own output as a coordinate offset and straight contours bend into deltas, oxbows and swirls. The Warp instrument scales the displacement — kept below one feature width, or the land shreds into static.
Ridge folding
Fold the signal at zero: the absolute value creases every crossing, and inverting turns creases into crests. Blend it over the rolling base with the Ridges instrument — this is where mountain ranges come from.
Determinism is the whole product: the permutation table behind the noise is shuffled by a seeded PRNG, so World Nº 48291 is always, exactly, World Nº 48291. The complete machinery — warp amplitudes, Nyquist clamping, the island falloff — is documented with real code in the Field Guide.
One height function, six stages
Follow a single world through the machine. Each plate below is the same seed, same coordinates — computed live at a different stop along the height pipeline, from the raw fractal signal to the finished survey chart. This is the exact order of operations behind every frame on the stage.
Base signal
Plain fBm at the world's Scale and Detail. Rolling, isotropic, directionless — geology before tectonics.
Domain warp
The sample grid itself is bent by low-octave noise. Contours smear into deltas and inlets.
Ridge blend
Folded ridge noise crossfades over the base at the Ridges setting. Mountain chains crystallise.
Island falloff
A radial mask sinks the rim below the sea. The infinite plane becomes a diorama on a plinth.
Hypsometric tint
Height above the sea indexes the biome's six-stop ramp; steep slopes pull toward bare rock.
Hillshade & sea
North-west light rakes the relief, shallows glow along the coast — the finished chart plate.
Six instruments, one landscape
The rack on the stage reads like a synthesizer because it is one — six continuous controls patched into a single height function. Nothing is a filter applied after the fact; every slider reshapes the mathematics itself, and the mesh morphs to follow.
Relief
Vertical exaggeration — the master gain. Every other instrument multiplies through it: at 0.2 the world is a tidal flat, at 2.2 the same seed becomes alpine.
Scale
Feature wavelength. Low values survey a continent from orbit; high values crowd the island with headlands, coves and islets. Purely a frequency knob on the noise field.
Detail
Octave count — how many fractal layers stack into the surface. Clamped automatically so the finest octave never drops below the mesh's Nyquist limit; beyond that, "detail" is just static.
Warp
Domain distortion. Bends the coordinate space before the terrain is sampled, twisting straight contours into fjords and river deltas. The most painterly control in the rack.
Ridges
Crossfades the rolling fBm base against folded ridge noise. At 0% the land is dunes and downs; at 100% it is all knife-edged crests. The mountain dial.
Sea Level
Where the survey floods. Raising the datum drowns valleys into bays and straits — the fastest way to turn one landmass into an archipelago. Repaints without rebuilding.
Field technique — double-click any slider to reset it · the scope above the rack traces your world's elevation along the z=0 meridian
Leave with the evidence
Every session can end as a signed print. The exporter re-renders your exact camera view at poster resolution, then composites it on digital paper with the survey record: world number, coordinates, the full instrument settings and the biome's swatch strip.