Quote Originally Posted by qoonpooka View Post
I wonder if there isn't anything that can take an existing planet map at lower resolution, and then use a given segment of it (of known dimensions) to seed a sort of 'refinement' randomization which would fill in the gaps
That is possibly the holy grail of 3d modeling for gamers. Search for thing like "procedural terrain generation"

also look for the paper "Generation of planetary models by means of fractal algorithms" by Ondrej Linda (CTU in Prague, August 2007).

-Rob A>