Mr. Picklesworth - yes, there is a native Terrain Command, but it has some drawbacks. limited texturing options, popping behaviour, no access to vertices etc.
fall_x - yes, the 3*3 Tiles idea is good. But keep in mind, your player should remain in the area -32000 to 32000 (forall, x,y and z), because if you don't you'll get Z-Buffer inaccuracies: rounding errors, really ugly lookin gstuff. You can try this, make a ship and fly to location 100'000 or something, with a camera. You'll see what I mean. So maybe you need to reposition the scene at 0,0,0 if the player reaches a new 3*3 zone.
LitoByte wrote a wrapped Terrain System some time ago, BTW.
fall_x - yes, the 3*3 Tiles idea is good. But keep in mind, your player should remain in the area -32000 to 32000 (forall, x,y and z), because if you don't you'll get Z-Buffer inaccuracies: rounding errors, really ugly lookin gstuff. You can try this, make a ship and fly to location 100'000 or something, with a camera. You'll see what I mean. So maybe you need to reposition the scene at 0,0,0 if the player reaches a new 3*3 zone.
LitoByte wrote a wrapped Terrain System some time ago, BTW.