Continuing on from Experimenting with Perlin Noise in Java  I decided to take a look at different noise generation algorithms. In doing so I came across Simplex Noise defined as “a method for constructing an n-dimensional noise function comparable to Perlin noise (“classic” noise) but with fewer directional artefacts and, in higher dimensions, a lower computational overhead.” Lower computational overhead you say? Fewer directional artefacts you say? Hand me a plate of that!

Starting again from scratch I created a Java application to display the generated heightmaps in a visual format. The first of which just populated the heightmap with a random value.

The next step was to implement the Simplex Noise algorithm. Looking good.

The black and white display was good but, I decided to tweak some of the display settings in my code in order to emphasise the noise pattern visually. Indeed this is just a set of rules on the rendering process the heightmap data remains the same as above. With the exception of a slightly larger value in artefact size.