.....as a texture generator for Vue! It's really easy and makes for some very realistic textures. 1. Open Terragen. You don't even need to make a terrain. Just place your camera. 2. In the pitch window, type -90. Now your camera is pointing straight down. 3. In the surface editor, add a child and color it, say a dark grey brown. (the base surface is already grey). Then make another child and make a light grey. And then another if you wish. In the Terragen distribution window, adjust your sliders till your happy. 4. Render your texture. 5. Make it seamless in whatever tool you do that with. 6. In PS or PSP, take the texture and threshold it. Now you have a most excellent b/w distribution map for use in Vue's material editor. M

For for some REALLY astonishingly realistic terrain maps, buy Flight Simulator 2004 and get some of the incredibly DETAILED terrain add-on's for the USA, UK, Europe, Japan, etc.- With a graphics card capable of hi-rez display (256MB works nice) you can point the camera at the ground from 3-5000 feet and get excellent Air Photos and use them in Vue with bump maps. This is the same effect as seen in the sample Vue scene on the Vue 5 Infinite CD featuring UK countryside. Also, the clouds in FS 2004 are also surprisingly good and can be used in Vue on Alpha Planes. Great for when you need cloud-tops, weather-storm fronts, etc- as the FS 2004 software (and add-on packs) go to great lengths to simulate realistic weather conditions...

Attached Link: http://www.megascenery.com/images/vol1/images/lax1.jpg

Here's a sample of what some of these scenery DVD's look like in FS-2004. They are based on actual high resolution air photography and satellite imagery- so detailed that you can see individual cars on the freeway below. Heh! Now imagine putting one of these hi-rez maps into Vue and adding your own eco-systems and buildings -On-Top- of these hi-rez air maps!

Attached Link: http://www.megascenery.com/images/vol1/images/lax14.jpg

Here's another example showing the LA area. This would be nice for anyone wanting to simulate realistic urban scenery in Vue for a realistic movie type look-- Alien Invasion Space Crafts, Giant Tsunami, etc... However- someone may "eventually" create some Eco-System terrain materials that can do something like this for FAKING the look of a hi-rez urban city. If you took, say, Dystopia- made it into a hi-rez air map- and then made it into pieces that could be dropped into an eco-system material, you could "fake" a hi-rez urban-city air photo on a variety of Proceedural terrains... (--I think I'm going to try this myself...)

Attached Link: http://www.daylongraphics.com

Also let us not forget Daylon Leveller, which is a nice adjunct for Terragen and, to my way of thinking, has an easier-to-use terrain editor.

Attached Link: http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

You could also use the World Wind from the NASA.

Wow! I've been using Leveller but have never come across the WorldWind software before. I'm doing this right now... Thanks!