Although terrain generation is a quite a large subject, Carbon Graphics seems to have done a lot at this front, partly by developing add ons to Geo and partly by partnering up with other suppliers such as Precion Lightworks, 3D Nature and Princess Interactive.
Terrain Generation
Carbon Graphics provides several plugins which enhance Geo to import DEM, DTED, SRTM, ESRI Shapefiles and DXF. The GEO_TERRAIN plugin additionally does the triangulation and can be used along with the GEO_SIMPLY plugin to generate nice terrain geometry.
Geo and VNS - Geo DBGS
Virtual Nature Studio (VNS) is a professional photorealistic terrain visualization, modeling & rendering package developed by 3D Nature LLC. This integration works bilaterally, you can build objects (such as buildings, vehicles, cultural features, trees, signage etc.) and have them auto-populated and positioned within VNS. Later on it is possible to load VNS-generated databases into Geo for scene Graph modification, tweaking and/or export to other run-time formats, pass data between the applications in MultiGen(TM)(.flt), 3DStudio (.3ds), VRML (.wrl) or Wavefront (.obj) formats.
Geo Photo
Precision Lightworks has developed the Geo Photo plugin to bring their image based modeling technologies into Geo. Geo Photo can used to model urban scenes from photos quickly and easily from aerial photos and elevation data. Geo Photo works directly in Geo.
AutoRoad
AutoRoad, a well known product from Princess-Interactive, is being offered as a part of the Geo ROAD bundle. AutoRoad allows rapid authoring and automatic generation of roads and terrain around roads. The generated databases can to be used for both urban and driving simulation. AutoRoad® builds roads in respect to roads constructions regulations and conforms to the law of civil engineering. Roads are built depending on their specifications as lines, arcs or Euler spirals (also known as Clothoides) or a combination. AutoRoad® delivers geometry and roads scenario data for use with computer generated traffic.
