I asked for a Procedural Crystal Generator as some of you may recall that would produce with the right development the kind of formations been talked about here as well as the crystal structures found in all rocks no matter the type, as well as small crystal grains such as quartz: that thread is here
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=643.0 but was dismissed a fresh look maybe called for on this issue, after the Gold release and development time permitting.
The idea of Terragen is the representation of the natural world or at least that is what I have be lead to understand, I also have an understanding of the human perceptual system and how it is keyed to look for certain details that it knows form its model of the world (Formed form both learning and direct experience) of what certain things look like rock by way of example, if any of these elements are missing no matter how small they maybe then the image when presented to the visual cortex via the eyes will look wrong even if the viewer cannot immediately say what is wrong with the image.
I have had this conversation in the past (Or tried to any way) with people here about how Terragen cannot simply focus on the large picture (The Micro View as it where) while the equally important smaller scale (The Macro View) goes unattended. What do I mean by this statement? A person goes for a walk in a mountain wilderness and stops by a ford (Small Stream) for a rest but also to take in the vista that surrounds him, within his visual field there is a small bolder field with ice clearly visible; his visual cortex assimilates the formation, texture, color, grain structure of the boulders while simultaneously noting the inclusions, trapped air bubbles and so forth of the ice among a million or so other small details of the scene, in other words the minutia of the world which depending of how one looks at it may seem trivial but you cannot assert it is not there unless you have an underlying psychological condition.
The point of the above it to illustrate that nature the closer you move up to it (Yes I know, way to go captain obvious) the more layers of complexity you are presented with, for me the one bane I have with terrain software and have done since I used the demo of Vesta (Now Vesta Pro) from the cover disk from Amigia Format Magazine is that its like some one smoothed the rocks with some thing that is a strange mix of plastic and plaster, swept up all the rocks and dirt and removed all the diverse plant and animal life, what you could call "Nature Sanitized".
If any of the above sounds like wanting New York before Captain Cook (And some may say the Vikings before him) had even left port for that historically important and fateful voyage then I am sorry meaning that for Terragen is in the early days yet, but "Wise men plan and see while the rest do not) as it where.
Regards to you.
Cyber-Angel