Real dunes form through aeolian saltation: wind lifts and bounces sand grains that hop downwind, gradually stripping the windward face and depositing on the leeward slip face, which slowly migrates the whole dune and etches fine ripple bands across it. This scene fakes that process without physically simulating grains: a plane mesh's vertex heights are displaced by layered (fractal) value noise sampled per-vertex on the CPU to sculpt rolling dune shapes plus finer ripple frequencies, vertex colors are gradient-mapped by height for the sunlit-ridge look, and a separate additive-blended point-sprite system drifts 9,000 sand particles horizontally with sinusoidal gust lanes and turbulence to suggest wind-blown sand.