the title was originally going to be "using a slow-motion lightning video to make even more realistic lightning."

this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1mB5rM8WHU , titled "Lightning captured at 7,207 images per second" shows how the lightning sends out little "leaders" that randomly search in the general direction of the ground. the video should explain it visually but if you dont get it, this is how i think it is. based on a range of 5 meters or so (idk for sure) it searches for an object that is connected to the ground, therefore has a positive charge, and if it finds it the entire lightning strike goes through that object. if not then it picks a random direction in the general direction of the ground. i think that could be used to make an even more realistic lightning strike. it could be that in the first 5 frames, the location of the mouse sends out 10 or 20 (or more, based on the pen size) leaders that search for the ground with respect to the gravity setting (down for vertical, toward the center for radial, randomly for no gravity). each leader also has a life value that depends on the pen size. if it does not reach an object, then all the leaders die off at around the same time. if a certain leader does find an object, then it initializes the "return stroke" and a huge destructive force goes through that path that that leader made. 

another thing im thinking of is that in real life its not like each of the lightning leaders can think, they just follow some incredibly obvious rule that i dont know yet. im thinking maybe each object has conductivity, even the empty space, or air (like a randomly generated air conductivity map generated each time tpt is started up), so that the leaders just follow the path of least resistance? idk.