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i doubt i could make a realistic looking terrain without instances so i decided to try make it look like realistic scaled model.
any ideas how i could improve this?

I think you should skip the normalmap. It makes it look not ver real. Use lots of more trees. I think 2D planes are good to go. Use small bitmaps. Maybe you could even use a scatter script for it.
Add some haze or fog later and take a look at aerial photos to get a feeling of the colors. The terrain image should be as high-res as possible.

Not bad imho,but on the third image, the bump or normal map of the road seems to be inverted...

thx for the tips, i added some distance fog and desaturated warm colors in the distance. i also scaled down trees and instead of low polygon models i decided to use planes with tree maps
i still have a lot of modeling to do on the ground plane (make roads, few industrial buildings and houses, power cables and towers and so on) and i'm having problems with bump map, i have to figgure out how to make normal map, i'm guessing that would be better for what i'm doing. if there are some tutorials on how to do that here on forum, i'd appreciate if someone could link them, i'm using rhino

added cloud shadows

looks very nice already, maybe make the water reflective with a mix material mixing your current one with a specular material and modulating with a texture map ?

Radiance

That's great work imho.

However, I think your trees definitely need more work done to them.

Maybe modelling them in detail wouldn't do much, because they're so tiny...
=> Did you try replacing them with simple planes in your model, then using an image of a real tree, and apply the texture + alpha map onto the planes?

Anyway that's a very cool approach to 3D I think - never seen anything like this before

Keep us informed with updated pics !

thx for the comments, guys

madcoo wrote:Maybe modelling them in detail wouldn't do much, because they're so tiny...
=> Did you try replacing them with simple planes in your model, then using an image of a real tree, and apply the texture + alpha map onto the planes?

those are simple planes in the kast two pictures, but they're arrayed and overlap a bit so i realized later that i need to reduce opacity of a map to get them to look less dark.
it looks better in latest tests, but i'm not gonna post anymore pictures unless i have all models and textures finished (theres going to series of pictures showing terrain as it is now and how it will be modified to fit the needs of wattter pumps that are going to be built in the area and how it would look if underground watter levels are raised if a haydrodam is build a bit further down the river). i think i'll have models and textures done simetimes this weekend and if i have better renders i'll post again

Cool

Looking forward to the nex pics !!!