Thought id just chip in here. I wrote ViewingDale as the purpose built app which is going to bring a whole campaigns worth of maps together. It has been tested with 100,000 icons on the same page and it renders at about a frame a second with that much info. Theres details about that on its forum.

I am writing my GeoTerSys to create vast terrain so that there is a base for the world which goes down to a level of detail which would allow you to put a house on it and it not look lost in a sea of blurryness.

So hell yeah ! I am heading that way at full speed. GTS is being used for MeDem and for me that is a test bed for the fantasy realm that will be made beyond that point. I want a large 1000 mile+ terrain where every city and village has detail of its floor plans etc.

I have wanted this since I started as a DM and have been making the tools to do this for the last 5 years. Yes its ambitious but I have no doubt any more that its within grasp - maybe 6 months away now. Were just starting to chug out MeDem terrain demo tiles within the last month.

If you need a demo of ViewingDale then were nearly at the time of iCon. See my sig, sign up and have a play with the demo that will be online in a few weeks/days now. ViewingDale is a VTT but its also a multi user networked map sharing tool. Connected members can all modify, update and share the maps, hence - Share the Vision !

What Del is describing with the Regional Development Index is a mapping hierarchy which is exactly the way the program stores the map database. I suspect that if Del were to put his collection into it he would be able to zoom from full continent to house floor and smaller in one smooth run.