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Looking at the output of the angle of this double pendulum made me think this was a good candidate for generating realistic looking terrain profiles. I can't be the first to notice this so I was wondering if this is used by anyone and if not, why not?

Angle of first pendulum in double pendulum showing interesting terrain like profile

Angle of second pendulum in double pendulum also showing interesting terrain like profile but with steeper sides

Link to Modelica Playground where this is demonstrated.

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for the creation of a 2-dimensional terrains it seems to work well, as your picture shows most clearly.

But it does not work for 3-dimensional terrains, because the behavior of a double pendulum is very complex. Thus, minimal changes in the initial values lead to completely different results. (see figure 1)

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Figure 1: two results of a double pendulum with very small change of initial position.

So if you simulate two adjacent strips of your terrain, the elevation values will not be comparable.

Terrains can be procedurally created in different ways. For example based on 2D/3D noise functions (e.g. Perlin noise, Simplex noise, ...), sometimes combined with a Voronoi diagram.

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  • $\begingroup$ Fractal Brownian Motion underpins many excellent terrain generation algorithms. The underlying noise can vary widely and isn't as important. $\endgroup$
    – pmw1234
    Commented May 25, 2023 at 13:05

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