One beautiful ball

My last blog post wasn’t particularly well-timed because the day after I wrote it, I took off for two weeks to get married and spend time with my wife’s family (wow, I guess it’s now my family too!) in their mountain cabin with no internet access. It was tremendously awesome, but not in the bloggy sort of way.

However, I may have been gone, but I haven’t been inactive. In addition to the whole, you know, getting married thing, I spent some time working on the planet’s appearance. It was actually my new nephews and nieces who really spurred me on; the moment they saw my work, they planted their hindquarters on the couch with me to offer suggestions and observe my progress. Here’s what I was able to show them by the end of the trip:

You’ll notice a number of enhancements:

The shoreline blends into the ocean
There are polar ice caps
The ocean has a subtle texture (alas, not animated yet)

Of course, all these enhancements have bitten into the generation time since I haven’t optimized them yet, so each new globe takes about 16 seconds to create. That’ll be fixed in due time.

Next up: rivers!