HaHa! I am pleased to meet another who shares my affection for L Erie

"D.J. Brown" wrote:

> Very nice indeed. The water needs fixed, though. I live a couple miles from
> Lake Erie and visit quite often. The water, when there aren't waves coming
> from offshore, is almost perfectly flat. When there are waves, they aren't
> small isolated bumps as in this picture. They come in in long, angled,
> ripples - with the water you've created riding on top of them. About 100
> feet off-shore, all along the lake, the water becomes signifigantly darker.

Yes I agree, I really did plan to push the water texture further.  Your
description is accurate to my memories of the Lake.  The way I did the water
surface was actually an experiment.  It consists of bicubic patches, the height
of their control points determined using eval_pigment.  The underlying pigment
pattern is basically the noise3d function scaled slightly in the x direction.
The smooth, oily, random pitch that results is reminiscent of the way the water
looks a ways up Black Creek which feeds into Dover Harbour.  But down in the
basin, behind the breakwater, it is usually the sort of busy chop over longer
period waves that you describe.  That look can be gotten from compounding the
ridgedmf function, as many pictures now have so beautifully demonstrated, but
when I used it with my bicubic patches, they just flattened it out anyway.  I
actually can come quite close to the photograph if I scale it down about half
and scale it long in the x axis and short in the z to get what look like
rippling troughs.

>
> Another thing, Lake Eries has TONS of algae growing in it near the shore.
> It's almost like an open netting of algae, with chunks that float to the
> top. Also, contrary to popular beleif, Lake Erie is a pristine blue
> now-a-days; wherever sunlight hits it. The color of the water in this
> picture is a bit too drab to be Lake Erie.

Yes the algae seems to come and go depending on wind/currents I expect, but it
is a defining characteristic of Erie.  I am more used to it in late summer or
fall.
The water right around Dover can get quite muddy from the beach being churned up
and from the afore mentioned creek.  But the abrupt change from the muddy green
to clear blue is always clearly visible as you look out over the lake from the
rise along main steet at the center of town.

>
>
> Just some thoughts from a "Lake Erie" resident. :)

One of the things I always remember is how cold it is out on that lake, even
when shore temperatures are 90+ degrees

Jim

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