Since voxels seem to be all the rage these days I feel like I may as well join in too since I don’t want to miss out on all the fun.  While I have been learning about procedural generation and noise functions, I realized that I also needed a way to visualize height fields somewhat more intuitively then just drawing a 2D top down projection.  I decided to explore the illusive technique of software rendered voxel landscapes,  not the minecraft type of voxel which uses octal trees to store a true 3D representation.  Most of these octal tree voxel techniques convert each voxel into a 3D polygonal representation so that the graphics card can render it quickly.  This method seems a little more pure then that, since its all voxel and all software.  The basis of this method is really just an extension of the ray-cast that I have explored before, but in actual fact I implemented a horribly naive ray-cast for this quick demo for the sake of simplicity.  A great tutorial covering the entire technique is best found here:

http://www.flipcode.com/voxtut/