AS3 3D terrain texture generation: Looking for intermediate/advanced ideas

Question

I have been bashing away at Away3D for AS3, and have made a little terrain generator, using Perlin Noise to create a heightmap, and then for texturing, to splice together 5 images (very generic noise based water, beach, grass, rock & snow) depending on the height.

Where to next? I doubt my ability to contribute directly to a 3D engine, but I wonder if anyone had mucked around with things like rain shadows, other geographic phenomenon. For example, as a cloud moves over a mountain range, it's temperature drops, decreasing it's ability to hold water, and thus with certain weather patterns, one side of the mountain range will be more lush than the other side.

I'm wondering if anyone has any reading material they could suggest.

Thanks lots

edit:Unwind thought I should add a picture. There's photos of me on the internet drunk and disorderly, a sad under-developed terrainer thing shouldn't be much more embarrasing! thanks for the ideas thus far... Mmmm... Lod'ing might be interesting, maybe before start adding detail I should see how big I can make a map. Vegetation makes lots of sense (duh... plants, of course!), I wonder how much I can do procedurally.

alt text http://assemblism.com/terrain/images/stage1.jpg

Answer 1

There are a lot of thing that come to mind concerning texture rendering. First I have to say I'm not a 100% sure what you are looking for. I'll just post everything i can think of and you can pick ;)

• Improve the general texture mapping. Does the slope of the terrain modify what kind of texture you would put at the given vertex? Are there other criteria available to indicate which texture to use?
• integrate a day/night cycle. Move the sun/moon around the terrain so that you can see the lighting change accordingly.
• Self shadowing always looks cool ;).
• A sky box/dome doesn't hurt either.
• Add procedurally generated vegetation.
• If you add vegetation, make it cast a shadow on the terrain.
• Think about improved water rendering (reflections, waves, transparency)
• I assume you use some sort of texture blending to blend the transition from one texture to the next?
• Are you using one big texture that you are stretching over the whole map or are you tiling your textures?
• Perhaps, rethink the rendering of the terrain itself? are you "just" managing a big array of vertice/edges? If so, look into further ways to manage your terrain data. Things like quad/oct-trees are often used for that kind of problem.

Those points are in no particular order.

edit:

gamedev.net

gamasutra.com