So There's 2 types of these mystery heightmaps:
Theres the plains one which always has a displacement of one. And then theres the 'Curve' Family of heightmaps which appears later in the heightmap code.
I
think that the former is used to only have certain heightmaps in certain places. And the latter is used to modify the heightmap (how this works is still a mystery.
This is Deimos, this has the Curve6 and Curve7 heightmap modifiers
This is Europa, this has the Pow3 modifier
This Ganymede, this has the Curve8 modifier. The whole reason why I think these are modifiers as the terrain on Ganymede is more pointy than the perlin heightmap would suggest
This has the Mercury_Plains heightmap. I think that it sets which parts have the heightmaps and which parts don't as:
- It is the size of the entire planet
- The heightmap itself is all ones apart from 2 sections which are zeros. I think the heightmap is making it so the other heightmaps don't apply in Mercury's landmarks
- It starts with the phrase 'PLAINS' rather than output, and one of the other parameters in the other heightmaps is PLAINS
This is the Moon, has the same Plains Heightmap
This is Phobos, it has the Curve4 modifier
This is Mars, has the plain heightmap
This is Venus, It has the Venus_Plains thing and also has the Curve1 modifier. This is further evidence to for my theory that it's some sort of modifier as there aren't any heightmaps that make Venus' volcanoes
I might take this to the discord to be honest
Edit: According to discord I'm right:
This will be
really useful actually