Highly realistic erosion model to make terrain authoring easier

[TROPtastic]

HintSystem on the KSA discord shared this novel erosion simulation technique that will be shown off in a SIGGRAPH 2026 paper. It seems to produce very realistic terrains by accounting for both material transport and geological erosion,

resulting in the emergence of complex terrain features such as meanders, braided rivers and deltas, debris flow scars, and alluvial fans.

The techniques demonstrated in the paper and code should help with authoring realistic terrain. I'm not sure if this sort of stuff would be in the purview of @Linx , but it is worth taking a look at and seeing if it makes sense to use as part of the environmental art workflow for KSA.

 

[TROPtastic]

In a comment from Linx on Discord, he said:

The terrain is built from scratch each frame, so anything that requires a simulation is immediately out or needs to be extremely cheap

The only way this novel erosion simulation system could be used in a real-time application would be with high resolution height maps. Since KSA uses base height maps with additional procedural modifiers per frame, the linked technique can't be used in KSA. However, it is still pretty cool and advances the state of the art.

 

[Kiwi Shark]

Finally! I've been meaning to get around to making my own Grand Canyon from scratch.