DT, from looking at your renders I would very much disagree that they are soft or would need to be "crisper". But this is a very subjective thing, of course. I see a great many Terragen gallery images that I feel are completely ruined by over-sharpening but others love them.
You will also find that many consumer-level digital cameras have high default sharpening for their "out of camera" images. This is to appeal to the average consumer taste in images, I suppose. Interestingly higher-end dSLR cameras that cost $1000's often have "softer" images, despite higher resolution, lower noise, and better lenses, but this is because most people using this level of camera are likely to want to post process their images in a dedicated image editor that provides significantly more power than in-camera processing. Thus they would want a minimally processed image out of the camera so they have the most of the "real world" data to work with.
In any case in regards to Terragen images in general the same sort of approach will be taken. Terragen tries to produce "neutral" images that are pleasing and take post processing well if necessary.
Remember that sharpening is generally a destructive process in terms of baseline image information. It produces a desirable look for some people, but certainly not everyone. You might then say we should provide a sharpening option in TG itself, but of course simple and free external image editors such as
XnView provide much more powerful, flexible and non-destructive ways of doing this and are a better option than a simplistic and limited built-in sharpen option.
Ultimately you may find that actually reducing antialiasing or other quality options will give you results that are closer to what you want, but this just highlights the reality that such sharpness actually equals *lower* "quality" in some sense.
- Oshyan
