A Way To Increase The Terraform Size

#1 For what you want to do you can alter the terrain square size in the Mission Editor -> Inspector panel -> Terrainblock -> squareSize. That setting defaults to 8 which gives you the stock 2k X 2k terrain area. Increasing squaresize will give you a larger area at the cost of stretching the terrain textures over a larger area and a reduction in terrain detail. Lowering it decreases the terrain size but boosts texture resolution and terrain detail.

SquareSize 2 = 0.5k X 0.5k
SquareSize 4 = 1k X 1k
SquareSize 8 = 2k X 2k
SquareSize 16 = 4k X 4k
SquareSize 32 = 8k X 8k

Truly changing the terrain size (through code) is a monumental task.

#2 Would higher res textures work for a better ground cover

#3 Stock TGE is limited to 256X256 terrain textures, so no that wouldn't help. However the detailTexture doesn't get stretched with the terrain so that can help make up for stretched terrain textures.

One thing I do is to just use the terrain textures for color and use a detail texture for overall closeup detail. For example I'll use the grass and patchy textures for areas of different colored grass then apply a grass-like detail texture to make everything look more like grass. Same thing for if I want a desert like environment, I'll use color textures that contain lots of yellows, red, and browns and then use a sandy or cracked earth detail texture. You can also get creative by including a bumpTexture for the terrain - though they seem to flicker or have artifacts from one grapics card to another. You are limited to one detailTexture and one bumpTexture per terrain, but with a little bit artistic creativity you can work around those limitations.

The terrain limitations (TGE terrain was designed for hardware about 10 years ago) is the biggest reason that I moved to TGEa.

#4 Also consider the idea of scaling the player and reference objects down. If you make the player 1/10th size and make them move 1/10th speed, you effectively have created a 20x20km map (with square size 8). You still end up with texture scale issues and such, as now the player's POV is much closer to the ground.

#5 Okay, so which is better way, which is less impact on the load times.

scale terrain or scale objects

#6 You can do both with little to no impact in-game, there will be no impact on load time. But I had problems with scaling my players down more than halfway. Past a certain point and they would fall through the terrain when you hit a bump at certain speeds.

The biggest factor for load times is lighting the mission, especially with lots of shapes in it.

#7 I scaled the terain but I noticed that it umm screws with the commander map, if you select center on blue base it dont take you there, I looked in the commandermap.gui for something related to the scaling but didnt find it,

#8 Use megaterrains, search for the resource, its put 4 terrains together. The other option is upgrade to TGEA that have megaterrains or atlas ready.

#9 One other thing to consider is why you need big terrain. If I was making a flight sim, I'd scale stuff down for example.

Doh - question I should have asked earlier. Are you using TGE or TGEA? Or did I miss that.