How do I get rid of those horrible steps on the lower altitude slopes of the mountain terrain? I've tried smoothing but that just makes the whole terain look like molten custard.....
If it's because the terrain was made from 8bit greyscale images, would 16bit make any differance since i've just purchased Bryce 6.1 and not have steps, or is there another way to make a terrain without steps?

Thanks for your help. :)

You must increase the resolution of the terrain to hide the polygons up close.   I have found myself routinely working with 4096x4096 terrains a lot.  It is poly and memory intensive, but it allows better camera placements and terrain detail.  I hope that helps.

a 16-bit image will make somewhat smoother edges than a 8-bit.
The big factor is the resolution of the terrain object.

If you are making an image then importing a 16bit image is better. Avoid jpg because the compression can introduce error spots. Use a standard terrain size for your image like 512, 1024, 2048, instead of an odball size like 600, 800 pixels.

8bit will cause vertical stepping, go with 16bit instead for the smoothest results.
Furthermore a lower amount of poligons can result in jaggy terrains.

This is very curious since I've tried 16bit in TIFF format. I can't see that it's resolution since that alone shouldn't make steps, infact i've sude the smoothing filter with curved surface to correct the problem to no avail. I also always use 4096x4096 and that doesn't help either. And why is it the steps always appear on the low parts and not on the higher parts of the mountain?

I'm not entirely sure... Was the original height map an 8bit one which u then re-saved as 16-bit? or was it developed as 16-bit from scratch?

Are the low parts of your terrain flat?
If there is an extreme change in the normals or height it will contrast with the relatively unified normals/height of a flat area. Same stepping will happen on a plateau sometimes.
You could try trimming the lower edges off the terrain in the terrain editor, if nothing else works.

The only thing I can do is lower the steps part below ground level and use another flatter terrain in the same area and combine them.

Thanks anyway.

Edit: Just have to share this..... I've just worked out how to align objects like trees and rocks on uneven terrains, by clicking on the arrow button underneath the edit button LOL. Talk about a complete idiot, I was doing them all manually. :-D

I know this isn't answering your original question but another thing you can do to eliminate the flats on a bryce terrain is to apply "gaussian edge" in terrain editor.  Can you upload a sample image of the problem?