On the GameDev forums, a user by the name of “sylvestre” has posted code and videos of a project he developed to allow real-time visualization of 3.6GB of terrain data.
I finally made a demo version of the software I used in this post. If you have enough space and time to download 3.6GB of terrain data, you may try it on your PC (warning: it has only been tested on Windows XP, with an NVIDIA GeForce 7900 or 8800). The demo is available here:
http://evasion.inrialpes.fr/~Eric.Bruneton/demo.html
Otherwise you can see some High Quality videos here (made with more precise data and more realistic shaders – 16GB terrain, clouds, shadows, procedural details):
He’s using data from the Nasa Earth Observatory, which offers 500 meter/pixel resolution, and the STRM v4 from CIAT, which offers 90m per pixel. Very impressive stuff. See a video of the system in use (running at 150fps) after the break.
via realistic Earth rendering demo – GameDev.Net Discussion Forums.
