Quantisation

How much of a continuous surface survives being cut into a finite number of levels?

A deterministic value-noise height field is generated at full precision, then quantised into N discrete contour levels. The experiment computes the root-mean-square error between the original field and its quantised reconstruction.

Drag the level count. The contour drawing is the quantised field; the error readout is the exact information you destroyed to get it.

Reports RMSE between the continuous field and its N-level reconstruction, computed over the full sample grid.

The figure shown under the canvas is computed by the run above, in this tab, from the settings currently selected. Change a control and it is recomputed. Nothing on this page is a stored or illustrative value.