Displacement variety

[EmDee1]

I'm completely lost here Tried so many hours to understand the "scale issue", tried several default scenes, settings etc.
In those scenes I seem to understand the matter, but not completely I guess, because when I try to implement the things I learned in a more complex scene, my God, I get lost in all the nodes, different scales, shaders, displacements etc. GRRRRRRRR.....
I won't give up though, but I feel frustrated and have to let it out!!

[rcallicotte]

Thanks, EmDee.  We appreciate it.   

[Virex]

...but when I look at the numbers in my preview-render-screen, the actual hight is more than 400 meters

This is no problem at all of course. It's all about perception. If it looks like it is close to the spectator but the scale INSIDE the program is ridiculous, who cares then
As long as it looks o.k. it doesn't matter whether the chosen scales are real-world based or not.

However, if you're using "unrealistic" scales inside TG2, you might want to tweak the haze density and bluesky density a bit.

[Tangled-Universe]

...but when I look at the numbers in my preview-render-screen, the actual hight is more than 400 meters

This is no problem at all of course. It's all about perception. If it looks like it is close to the spectator but the scale INSIDE the program is ridiculous, who cares then
As long as it looks o.k. it doesn't matter whether the chosen scales are real-world based or not.

However, if you're using "unrealistic" scales inside TG2, you might want to tweak the haze density and bluesky density a bit.

Same accounts for that, it's all not that important. It will just have to look right, not accurate in scales/sizes.
I also made testrenders of grass surfaces 10m high because that did fit the scale best, for example.

[bigben]

If I read the original question correctly... If you're using a power fractal to provide the displacement, go to the colour tab and lower the offset. This will give the power fractal areas of black (no displacement) and patches of fractal displacement. From there you can play with the other settings to change the shape/contrast etc...

Additionally, a great exercise to do is to start a default scene, add a power fractal with black /white colors, and play with the fractals via all the tweaks.  See what they do.  ...

A good idea... but rather than creating a new scene, add a surface shader at the very bottom of your shader list (i.e. just before connecting it to the planet's shader input). Then add a powerfractal, check apply high and low colours, and connect it to the child input of your new surface. This will give you a preview of the fractal in situ so you can adjust the variation to suit your scene before connecting it to wherever you want to apply it.

When you're done just disable the last surface layer (leave it there in case you need it later)