Quote It does have global illumination I think...I know it has Parallax Occlusion Mapping and Ambient Lighting..so they may be.alternatives
As for King tiger, I thought it's only been 3 months late? It was scheduled for Q1 2007 I remember, as I remember having wishes of getting it on New Years
Parrallax mapping is a form of normal mapping, but it allows for generating actual geometry from a texture (or is that displacement mapping - could even be both). Ambient lighting is NOT global illumination. Ambient lighting just lights the area (without casting shadows) by a certain amount, Unreal Tournament 1999 had ambient lighting, quake might even have ambient lighting, I can't remember. Global illumination seems to calculate light reflection off of surfaces and (certainly in TG2) the effect of the atmosphere on sunlight, whereas that would instead be faked by an artist in crysis.
BTW> one of the main progblems with the preview window may be occlusion. Occlusion is a pass (a calculation of the scene) in which it works out what to render and what's invisible. Since Terragen generates
entire planets that's a lot to occlude, and calculating all of that on the fly just isn't possible at the moment.
And then once it's done the occlusion, it's gotta actually render your scene! All things considered, the preview is pretty damn fast.