Four billion years in four minutes – Simulating worlds on the GPU

The article discusses a procedural earth simulation created using GLSL fragment shaders, capable of simulating four billion years of an earth-like planet's history in just four minutes at 60 frames per second. The simulation begins with the early earth as a molten protoplanet, generating terrain through a heightmap that incorporates asteroid impacts and craters using a layered approach with noise functions. Tectonic plate movements are simulated by randomly generating seed locations and allowing plates to grow and collide, leading to the formation of mountains and ocean trenches. Hydraulic erosion is modeled to create realistic river basins, while a simplified climate model approximates mean sea-level pressure (MSLP) and generates wind patterns and temperatures based on land and ocean interactions. Seasonal changes are incorporated to simulate dynamic climate patterns. The distribution of life is influenced by climate, with a Lotka-Volterra model capturing the interactions between vegetation, herbivores, and predators. As the simulation progresses, human activity is introduced, highlighting the impact of fossil fuel consumption on the environment. Over centuries, the burning of fossil fuels releases significant carbon emissions, leading to a dramatic increase in global temperatures and rendering large areas uninhabitable. The simulation effectively illustrates the complex interplay between geological, climatic, and biological processes over geological time scales, culminating in the rise and fall of human civilization.