Critisism on new World Map

[octopod]

I'm curious about the rationale for some of your mountain range placements. For instance, the broad Himalaya-style mountain range on the large eastern continent that's interrupted by an inland sea, and a similar phenomenon way off on the far left of the map -- mountain ranges don't usually have sudden depressions somewhere in the middle, they generally extend across a continent the long way. I suppose looking at the seafloor elevations would help a lot in thinking about this.

The other thing that bugs me a little -- and this is a common FT problem, I think -- is that the height "noise" in the inland areas is a bit too uniformly dispersed, or high variance, or something, to look realistic. The broad flat plains and high plateaus that one would expect don't appear to be there, they're interrupted by piddly little stand-alone mountains. This happens in a few places in the real world (see northern Africa and western Australia -- that is, it sometimes happens on really old continental shield) but not in most places, even quite tectonically stable ones. It just looks kinda weird.

Also, what makes your big mountain ranges so uniformly three chains across? And what's going on in the swirly zone on the middle left?

[Uomaru]

Thanks octopod for taking the time to share your critic and thoughts!
I am finished with the continents shape and form, but by no means the mountains, so it's always open for change and adjustment.
I completely agree with you about the random and bumpy noise terrain, and sadly I don't know what I should do about it in it's current state. Either I will have to find a way to get rid of it, or I have to use the FT maps as guides and not solid set truth about the world.

For the mountain formations and their placement I have used tectonics to figure out convergent, divergent and transform boundaries. The eastern continent are actually three plates sliding towards each others. The little inner sea is part of the south eastern plate etc, and with the west continents the same principle, or something... I am not a geologist or expert at all, but I try to follow the advice given on this website and other sources on the web and books.

The swirly zone to the left is.. well, I want some realistic functions to the world, but I couldn't help myself to add some unrealistic elements to I thought it looked interesting, but maybe it just looks silly?

The three chains across are my poor first attempt to draw out where the mountains ranges would go. I didn't want to make any super fancy stuff if it was going to change anyway :/ do the mountains on the north east continent, the one breaking apart from the big continent, look more plausible? Do you have any tips/ideas on how to make the mountains look better in FT when using the prescale offset tool?