First off, I'm not thinking about that.
I was wondering how to make a simple simulation of a waterfall onto some dunes on the iPhone.
It turns out several people tackled the issue of moving water, and GameDev has approached the idea several times. However, all these solutions seems computationally intensive (and it makes sense, given water is a fluid and fluid mechanics is complicated). I'm interested in a shortcut, since it doesn't really matter the the simulation be accurate, but just that it seems accurate.
Someone asked about simulating with (Navier-)Stokes on DirectX, using 1500 particles. He states his result is jaggy. Of course, on iPhone it would be a OpenGL ES implementation of such a thing.
Another good soul tried using Chipmunk's physics engine, but it sounds to me like using a battletank to kill a mosquito, and it still brings the issue of many, many particles. So I am now wondering if it would be reasonable to use a technique similar to