High!

During the last months, I experimented with various isosurface (and 
pattern) functions to generate realistic-looking landscapes. To 
"navigate" around these landscapes (e. g. for placing cameras or, in the 
future, trees or buildings) I found it necessary to have an orthographic 
map view of the terrain at different scales.

But at very large scales such as 1 by 1 kilometres (whis equals to 1 
metre/pixel at my favourite rendering resolution - see last attachment) 
a problem occurs: as the human eye's ability to discern hues is limited, 
I have to adapt the color_map for the original 200 by 200 kilometres 
physical map to the height range of the respective large-scale section. 
To do this, I would have to know the highest and lowest point of the relief.

How could this be achieved? The highest point could be tested for by 
shooting a series of parallel horizontal trace() rays from one edge of 
the map section, starting at a height well above the highest mountains 
in the whole isosurface (for example 15 kilometres), going lower each 
iteration until the first mountain peak is hit. But how to this for the 
lowest point?

And, after all, I'm sure that this method would be outstandingly 
time-consuming - is there any way to do it faster?

See you in Khyberspace!

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