Yeah I used to use the random noise on a terrain method, but was never really happy with the results - the grass always looked just a bit too spiky/alien for my liking. To make the terrain/noise grass look less harsh and spiky, I once gave the texture on the terrain/noise a high frequency grass shaped transparency map - it "softened" the grass up that way and made it look a lot less spiky/hard (but watch those render times blow up). Anyways, glad to be of some help.

Dreams are just nightmares on prozac...
Digital WasteLanD