Moved to GP&T where it is more suited...

So it's the simulation rather than presentation that you're stuck with? There are two distinct parts to rendering bodies of water so best be clear on that.

If it is the simulation then, to be honest, your use of Perlin Noise is about as simple as it gets and it shouldn't be too hard to implement. Run a few different octaves (covering low-high) to get the detail and then animate the coefficients over time...

The next step up is to look into the physical simulations - Navier-Stokes being a name that comes to mind (haven't touched it myself though). A quick search pulled up this PDF that might be of interest here.

Do you have any specific questions? Explaining the whole technique could take a long time. Which papers/tutorials have you read? Which algorithms are you trying to implement? Any particular steps/equations that don't make sense?


hth
Jack

If you're using perlin noise, then you can easily find the height of the water surface at any point in your (near) endless ocean, so that's a good start. Then all you need to do is pick some points, set them to the appropriate height for the time and make polygons between them. That's all there is to it. Which points to pick, making what shapes of polygon is up for debate of course. A good start would be just a uniform grid around the camera. My advice would be to do that first, and only look around for better techniques that don't waste so many polygons in the distance once you have it working.