A different kind of modelling

Thanks to the Programming Reddit, I came across this fantastic 12 part article by Shamus Young about how he wrote a program to generate a night-time cityscape from first principles (check out the video below). His methodical, iterative approach to creating the visual model is very similar to the approach that I have seen taken by some of the best model railroaders.

This leads me to think that there is something common to all modelers, whether they are using physical materials (wood, plastic and metal) or computer code. There is the same desire to capture aspects of the real world and to show off to an admiring audience.

My favorite model railroading sites tend to be those where a master modeler takes you through the detailed steps in creating a model such as, for example, Craig Bisgeier's Housatonic RR. In my view the similarities between the respective sites is striking.