have you guys seen these?

[solbraver]

procedural planet creation. Some are open source, and maybe some stuff from them can be implemented?

http://www-evasion.imag.fr/Membres/Eric.Bruneton/

http://proland.inrialpes.fr/download.html

http://www.outerra.com/

[robn]

Yes, they're fairly well known in this space. Thanks!

[Luomu]

Outerra is a proprietary engine so it's not really relevant.

Proland is pretty well known, we might use the atmospheric rendering some day. It looks very realistic.

[FluffyFreak]

Yeah I especially like the forest rendering stuff here: http://evasion.inrialpes.fr/~Eric.Bruneton/