PeterT said:
True, but if you do that you just get some random piece of terrain, not neccessarily anything that looks what the game designer(s) want. Making trees procedurally and just storing a seed value is good enough in just about any circumstance, but terrain is more difficult for obvious reasons since you may want to have a particular look.
It gets more complicated still when it comes to man-made features in a natural landscape. Think of a cottage for example. In the past, a window was represented by a quad with a texture of a number of glass panes set in a frame. In games even in today you'd expect each and every pane to be individually modelled, the frame to be made out of polys also etc. In the future, the glass will have to be realistically uneven (flat glass couldn't be made until fairly recently; you blew a ball of glass and cut it open and flattened it out before it cooled. Maybe the wood of the frame cracked, and we expect hinges to be included too, etc. Then think of putting the same attention to detail to all the rest of the cottage. Then think of making a whole BUNCH of cottages like that...
All this will require even more effort on behalf of modellers.
*G*
