I'm looking for a program or website that randomly generates planets, when given several different variables (general climate, age of planet, amount of water cover in percentage, whatever). While this may be better suited to be in a technology forum, I'm thinking that those who study earth sciences will be able to help me out better.
I'm no expert on this topic, but I doubt such a program yet exists. At least for layman use. It would require an extremely powerful computer to calculate all the information involved in simulating a planet.
Your best bet (and I know they're available*) would be some of the SFRPG sites (Science Fiction Role-Playing Games), say Traveller, MegaTraveller or 2300 AD (also known as 2300 or Traveller:2300) [make allowances for US/ UK spelling of Traveller/ Traveler]. There are (usually included in the basic rule books) charts and equations for calculating (to various degrees of accuracy**) such things, and fans HAVE converted these to spreadsheets and/ or programmes, most of which are downloadable free as a labour of love for others to use and share. * I'm not at home for a few days, so I couldn't even check if I have any on my hard drive, I suspect I do. ** 2300 particularly takes great pains to differentiate (in its system) between science and science fiction, so whatever data/ equations they have will be, probably, as near to accurate as you're likely to get without actually working in the field. Try Googling for, say, WorldGen or similar, if you haven't reported any success in a week or so I'll dig through my hard drive and see what I can find. 2300 AD sites Etranger and/ or Pentapod's World (especially the latter) may well have what you're after.
Well, I'm not looking for every single blade of grass. I wouldn't even extremely care if it went as far as tectonic plates (though that'd be preferable). I'm just looking for basic topography, stuff like that. And I've googled and googled. But I'll try you're ideas (WorldGen and such).
One program I find quite useful is Planetgen http://www.gharat.net/pages/planetgen.html it allows you to set the parameters of the world. Unfortunately it is a bit crude and unrealistic, so I manipulate the resulting textures in Gimp before use. For the orbital parameters of the planets I sometimes use Stargen http://www.eldacur.com/~brons/NerdCorner/StarGen/StarGen.html which gives quite realistic solar systems (but I quite often tweak the results of this program as well). Some of the worlds I've helped to make for Orion's Arm can be found on these pages http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oa-page&page=gen_OACelestia1 http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oa-page&page=gen_OACelestia2 http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oa-page&page=gen_OACelestia3 (note; these worlds are the end product of efforts by several different people, over the last nine years or so...)
Farcry and Oblivion are two games that have map generators as far as I know. They can simulate everything you could want. Not a whole planet, but quite a big map. I'm sure they are the most powerful and realistic map generators open to the public. From atmosphere, to landscapes, to water, and even down to each blade of grass. If you go this route it is because you want good visuals, not good data.
