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I'd like to ask a naive question, as I'm not really familiar with procedural terrain generation but I've been curious about it from afar. From what I can tell, most work in this area revolves around manipulating geometric patterns to "look like" mountains/islands/whatever.

Is there any value in modeling geological processes instead? So if you take a flat plane, along with a model of geological forces that could alter that plane, and run some kind of simulation over time (in effect simulating erosion etc), could that not produce a more "realistic" terrain?

I assume it's much more complex, much more computationally expensive, and all that. But I'd be surprised if no one at all has attempted this.

As a complement, a nice (and funny) videos about fractal terrain generation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsJHzBTPG0Y

It's a completely different approach but checkout F. Kenton Musgrave's implementation of multi fractals for terrain generation.

"Texturing & Modeling: A Procedural Approach"

Okay I've seen a ton of procedural earth generation blog posts. Random bisections, noise, fractals, erosion, watersheds, biomes and climate derivation, etc etc.

Why did the author of this one choose this approach rather than some other approach? What issues did they see with others that they decided to write their own? What's unique here?

Or maybe: What's the ultimate procedural earth generation technique? Is there anyone following these and comparing them?

Very nice writeup. I like the process of adding random noise to the distances on the graph when deriving the mountains

I’m tired of terrain generation techniques that just involves noise.

People should really try to step up and make landforms that are modeled after tectonic activity and create biomes based on weather patterns and ocean current. The end result will be far more natural and realistic.

I remember being blown away by Bryce3d in the 90s. Glad to see the problem of understanding terrain generation is still being explored.