[geoschmo]

Those are very cool. The landscape effects and clouds give it almost a 3d effect.

One thing, the lighting angle looks very neat for pictures, but if your intention is to use these in the game you may want to reconsider. It's been done before and the look is a little odd in the game. Because your lighting could end up on the wrong side depending on where the game sticks the planet in the system map.

Unless you are planning on only using that light angle for the large images that show up on the planetary detail screen. If you used a straight on lighting angle for the small pics that go in the big planet.bmp file then this could work. But that means you have to make two renderings for each planet, instead of just resizing. But if your software is fairly user friendly maybe that's not such a problem.