A spanning tree of the canvas is generated using Wilson’s algorithm and then flooded with color. Hue encodes Manhattan distance from the root of the tree. (This is not an optimal visual encoding, but it suffices and is pretty.)
Spanning trees can also be used to generate mazes. See a maze generated with Wilson’s algorithm flooded with color, and compare color floods of spanning trees generated with Wilson’s algorithm to random traversal, randomized depth-first traversal and Prim’s algorithm.
What is it that slows the drawing down? Is it artifiicially slowed via D3? If so where? Or is the algorithm just so expensive that it takes as long as it does to compute each branch/edge?