Poisson Disk Sampling

(stripeacross.com)

82 points | by vismit2000 4 hours ago

8 comments

  • Terr_ 29 minutes ago
    > Consider when the algorithm places a point p and then samples its annulus to get a new point q.

    I was confused for a while thinking p and q were swapped here, relative to the visualization below. [0] However I now think what I missed is that that the visualization is showing two points that are already firmly-established, and the question is where a potential third (unseen, unnamed) point could be placed.

    So metaphorically speaking, it's about picking a new direction of travel that isn't guaranteed to be into your own recent footsteps.

    [0] You might say I have problems minding my p's and q's.

  • akkartik 1 hour ago
    Still one of the most satisfying debug UIs I ever came up with.

    https://akkartik.name/post/2023-11-04-devlog

    • cowthulhu 7 minutes ago
      The third one especially is both (really) cool looking and legible!
  • jacobolus 3 hours ago
  • kleiba2 3 hours ago
    Possibly interesting post from Casey Muratori, regarding random placement of grass in games: https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0013, using blue noise.
  • WithinReason 2 hours ago
    I see the generated points often form lines which would cause aliasing in computer graphics, why not use low discrepancy sequences instead?
  • addag 3 hours ago
    I'm wondering if it can be used as a low-discrepancy sequence
    • jacobolus 43 minutes ago
      For a low-discrepancy sequence you are usually trying to generate one point at a time, up to some arbitrary number. Here the goal is to generate (roughly) a specific number of points that fill a whole region.

      So you probably could figure out a way to use this method to make a low-discrepancy sequence but it's probably not going to be particularly suitable compared to alternatives.

  • hingler36 3 hours ago
    I love these kinds of problems, because they try to produce what humans perceive as random instead of something truly random. Another great example of this is blue noise
  • jonstewart 50 minutes ago
    Oh, that’s rather a different sort of disk sampling than I imagined.