My first attempt to create a Voxel (volume pixel) engine in ActionScript3.
Since everything became faster even this should be possible and it is. The voxel-engine has currently three degrees of freedom (six is what you would cal “real”). It runs not that fast but is still unoptimized.
The engine takes a HeightMap (any format, like raw/jpg/gif) and transforms it into a BitmapData. Every pixel of the HeightMap gives us a vector like like (0,getPixel(0,0),0). As you can see the y-coordinate (height) is represented by the heightmaps color at given (x,z) position.
Currently only the heightmap itself is interpolated using bilinear interpolation (for example to get correct results for getPixel(0.5,0.5) which is not possible without interpolation). The output on screen is still not interpolated. Textures are also missing but there is a lot of potential.
The best thing about heightmaps: You can draw on them. Now imagine you with a blaster shooting against a mountain which deforms in realtime! Get the idea? :-)
Update:
Just to show a newer version with bilinear interpolated colors and where everything looks a lot smoother. Sky is faked!
Won’t you leave a demo swf here? Would be interesting to see it in action!