The beauty of fractal terrain generation is that it can supply a large number of unique terrains from a compact representation. The ugliness of fractal terrain generation is that it looks, well, like fractal terrain. Okay, it's not that ugly, but it's nothing to write home about either. So, these days I'm spending my time trying to figure out ways of making the terrain look less fractal. The screen shot below displays some of the changes I've made of late. In particular, using a cheap and dirty lighting technique called slope lighting Link, the mountains now look like they're taller than the surrounding terrain because they've got some shadows to show off their majestic rugged cragginess. Before the introduction of slope lighting, the mountains often looked more like clouds passing over the terrain (fractal terrain generation algorithms also make decent clouds with just a few minor mods to the carburetor) or strange sunken snow-covered areas. The effect is used throughout the map, but with varying degrees of severity. For example, the deserts and prairies are smoothed out so that they don't look as chaotic and rough (though I may have gone a little too far with the smoothing--more experimentation is called for). I think the overall effect is pretty convincing.