Building Planet Simulation?

Quote:

Original post by usb2killer I'm trying to build planet simulation - a sphere with land, mountains and sea. those need to be generated in realtime, and to be very detailed (LOD?). How i need to do it? where to start? thanks in advance.

Well I know of a game called Infinity which uses procedurally generated heightmaps to make semi-realistic planets. I'm not sure how hard it would be to implement, I've never delved there myself but as a starting point you might want to research height-maps.

Here's the demo of infinity:



Which is pretty damn amazing. Hardly any games have done seamless space-planet transition. The only ones I've heard of are:

BattleCruiser series?
Elite?

Never tried either of them though...

i guess that after what you replied i can ask my question better.

how can i program spheral terrain (height map) with dynamic LOD. (XNA 4)