Oasis: A Real-Time Hydraulic and Aeolian Erosion Simulation with Dynamic Vegetation

Alexander Maximilian Nilles, Lars Günther, Stefan Müller

2025

Abstract

We present a novel real-time combined simulation for aeolian erosion, hydraulic erosion and vegetation, capable of transforming barren deserts with sand dunes into lush forest landscapes and vice versa using simple user interaction. Existing aeolian and hydraulic erosion methods are extended and unified using a moisture model on a layered heightmap, supporting bedrock, soil and sand as terrain materials. Vegetation uses a 3D radius-based model and is efficiently rasterized to a 2D density map via a split-Gaussian model, inhibiting erosion. Abiotic factors such as moisture, terrain slope, surface water and illumination are considered in vegetation growth and vegetation can spread radially as well as with the wind. Each plant considers the position and size of all neighboring plants as a biotic growth factor, made possible through a set of uniform grids of varying resolutions. The user can freely model different plant species by defining their ecological niche and adaptability to changes in terrain elevation and competition with other plants. Even underwater vegetation is possible. Interspecies competition can be defined freely using a competition matrix. The resulting method runs in real-time at a terrain resolution of 20482 with 2,000,000.00 plants.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Nilles A., Günther L. and Müller S. (2025). Oasis: A Real-Time Hydraulic and Aeolian Erosion Simulation with Dynamic Vegetation. In Proceedings of the 20th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications - Volume 1: GRAPP; ISBN 978-989-758-728-3, SciTePress, pages 39-52. DOI: 10.5220/0013112100003912

in Bibtex Style

@conference{grapp25,
author={Alexander Nilles and Lars Günther and Stefan Müller},
title={Oasis: A Real-Time Hydraulic and Aeolian Erosion Simulation with Dynamic Vegetation},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 20th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications - Volume 1: GRAPP},
year={2025},
pages={39-52},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0013112100003912},
isbn={978-989-758-728-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 20th International Joint Conference on Computer Vision, Imaging and Computer Graphics Theory and Applications - Volume 1: GRAPP
TI - Oasis: A Real-Time Hydraulic and Aeolian Erosion Simulation with Dynamic Vegetation
SN - 978-989-758-728-3
AU - Nilles A.
AU - Günther L.
AU - Müller S.
PY - 2025
SP - 39
EP - 52
DO - 10.5220/0013112100003912
PB - SciTePress