World Generators

[Jak Nazryth]

I've seen some of the older world generators dating back to the 90's, and they are ok... but in some of the recent published supplements, I've seen absolutely beautifully rendered planetary maps with a typical hexagonal overlay (or none at all) but with beautiful natural looking textures of continents, terrain, color coded basic topography, realistically rendered ice sheets and bodies of water.

Has anyone had experience with some of these newer generators?
I even saw somebody post an example where you can have a typical "flat" map, and there was even a setting that would maintain the sphere shape and it would even rotate.
I personally have never used one of these before, not even the older software from the 90's.
What is (are) the best world generator out there?
Is there something for purchase? I'm ok with that as long as it's not "stupid expensive" or a site(s) where you have to sign up?

I only have 2-weeks (3 weeks at most) left to prep for my new campaign and I would love to use a world generation software this time, as apposed to me hand sketching world surfaces on a printed sheet.

Can anyone point the way?

 

[steve98052]

Do you mean world statistics, or something like this?

https://secure.profantasy.com/products/ft.asp

I have used it, and it's a mix of amazing and frustrating -- the latter when you have a world description and need to generate a world to match. Fill in statistics for the world and the program generates a map from a pseudo-random generator seed number (four billion possible), and you get several types of maps.

For example, Knorbes is described as having two continents, Greater and Lesser; the southern part of Greater is a nature preserve with access strictly restricted, and Imperial Marines on the scene to enforce the restriction. Filling in the statistics is easy, but it takes a lot of tries to find a seed number that generates a world with a small continent and a big one, the latter divided across the equator.