Hm - maybe it's just these old worn-out eyes of mine, but I fail to see a major breakthrough in the ultra terrain size. Granted there's plenty of detail and the artistry involved is unsurpassed. Perhaps the larger size is better for huge renders, thus making better quality prints? Enlighten us, o Guru Of Terragen!

No, I tend to agree with you. It as only a test to see if it was possible, and of course to see if it was worth it. My conclusion is that it generally isn't. However, it does give you a lot more room to work with, so it could be useful in an animation where you want to cover a lot of ground and not run out of terrain. The differences might also show themselves more at ground level. This was the first decent perspective I found and I figured I might as well render it. I'll be trying others soon, as well as trying the same perspectives with a 4097 version of the terrain. I will post if the findings are particularly interesting or contrary to what I've just said.

I like the big feel, probably a function of the terrain and atmo as much as the size of the footprint. And I do love the image. Lovely work all around.

I'd like to do one from the ground next to see if it maintains the sense of scale. Interestingly the "Metre point spacing" actually isn't that high in this case. The total terrain size is about 36km, which for an 8k x 8k terrain is not that big. It amounts to just under 4.5 meters per pixel. This was the "native" point spacing I recieved it in so I assume it reflects real world spacing.

This is very interseting. I've been out of the loop, I'll have to look into all this. I'll have to see where you go with all this. Excellent work :)

The ability to render larger terrains is something I discovered a month or two ago and then put aside. I picked it up again last week and posted about it on the Yahoo group, and there was some lengthy discussion about it. It is possible to use terrains up to 8193, none larger have been successfully loaded and rendered. The ability to load and render these terrains also seems to be quite variable from system to system and does not seem to directly correlate to the system's specifications. A machine with 2GB's of RAM has been unable to load the same terrain I loaded and rendered with 1GB. Non-square terrains can also be rendered just fine, which is a new development. All of this is unsupported by Planetside however, so experiment at your own risk. ;)

The sole reason I posted the image here is for you, so it is natural to dedicate it to you. ;) Also many, many people post "work in progress" images here, sometimes they say so, sometimes not. I thank you for the other comments, but would ask for some more details on the surfacing being "very poor". And yes, it is an image made entirely by me, except for the DEM which was created by the universe, measured by NASA, and converted by Tim. ;)

I can not judge the details very well because of the size but what I wanted to say is that the base - surface map has only one colour or two.It seems to me that more layers and colours will help. That is for the snow too. Also the green colour at the bottom is OK but some variations will help. From the compositional POV that green part is the centre of your image, therefore you should use it as the brightest or the attractive part of your image. To me the POV in your image does not help for originality. And, the composition is open from above. In this cases we say - "it is open".Unless you have a spot or some idea to keep the composition open that will be a minus. The atmo needs to be thicker from above.That will help you to close the image.

Fair enough, I appreciate your critique. For my part I felt the central part and the green to be "leading me" somewhere, and I liked the feeling. I agree that the vegetation should have more variety, but I will not make it brighter as realism is ultimately my focus here. The base surface map has quite a number of colors btw, they just aren't as evident here. I have used a similar surface map in some other images on my site if you wish to see it in more detail. Thank you again for your thoughts.

Wow really makes me want to walk down to green valley - I'm sure its much warmer down there. Love the grains in the snow - very realistic. I like it.

Love the scale...love the light. I've been following this thread for some time and it's nice to see some tangible evidence of what this sort of terrain can give. I like vast open space and this appeals to me. As for the surface, I'm acquainted with the srf Oshyan has used here and it's a pretty hefty build..it's not shown to its best advantage in this image. You should post here more often Oshyan.

Thanks Gary. I'd be interested to hear if you do any experiments on such terrains as well. I have made a few available in that thread, as you probably are aware. After rendering this image I discovered that a few of the surface layers were still confined to lower altitudes unnecessarily, making it look less balanced and detailed than it should. To be honest I never expected to show this image when I first started rendering it, but I liked how it turned out well enough, and the request was on the table to show my work, which I preferred not be an old one. I may post more in the future, but I frankly dislike the Renderosity system in many ways, not the least of which is my inability to make paragraphs in my comments. ;) So these galleries will not likely become a regular visiting place. You are of course welcome to visit and comment on the galleries on my site, which I admit have been neglected for far too long. I intend to remedy that in the near future.

Love the pov, lighting and snow surface; excellent terrain - I kinda agree with Rich2 - the level of detail (which is awesome nonetheless) doesn't seem as expoential as you might expect it to be but then again, Rich uses terrains smaller than 4096 that look 4096...

Excellent render, surface mapping is realistic and subtle, terrain extremely detailed, and pov nicely chosen

Genial!!!!!!! POV, Terrain, surface and light, super combination! V

it appears after two weeks away I have some catching up to do!!!Fascinating stuff Java,gonna have to look into this more(I love this view/sense of scale/depth)....v.impressive!!

Thanks for the explanation and for the useful data about render time, interesting deep exploration of ter size. Huge potentials in 8092! the 1600 image speak itself. Imho current HW are not useful to render a 8092 if a quite top HW, renders a 16001200 top quality image without water in 9 hours; a 40003000 with water how many days could needs?? Btw I'm still wondering why TG2 doesnt support modern Gpu's or multiprocessing .... The way for photorealism need too many hours for my patience!

I like the lighting and the surfaces.

Very cool image and experiment...I am very interested in hearing of your progress and future experiments. TG has been around for a few years but, it still has many secrets to uncover...Thanks! I usually don't go over 2049 size terrains... final render at 2048 X 1536 (I hate long renders)and believe that meter point spacing has a lot to do with surface detail.

I like it