I think the biggest difference between ClOD and WOP terrain is that WOP looks like it is relying more on photographic textures, while ClOD's textures appear to be more hand painted. The WOP textures also have good resolution and use to good effect a secondary colour/noise map to break up the pixelation at low altitude. WOP's England map is probably the weakest map in the game (due to the 'green' filter)- some of the others are really beautiful and give a good sense of realism for a modern game. When I compare these to ClOD, I am unfortunately disappointed with ClOD's terrain visuals. Tree clumping and placement is more natural looking in WOP. Terrain elements hang together better- cities or built up areas appear as part of the landscape rather than being plonked on top.
I would agree with other posters that the ClOD artists may have spent too much time working on individual assets and less time trying to make everything work together as an efficient and believable whole. It's this discontinuity between elements as well as the hand painted, artificial look of the ground textures that brings down ClOD's terrain visuals, imo. Disappointing, but not unfixable. I hope the terrain gets a look at by the devs at some point because it's doing a disservice to the awesome cockpit graphics, which I believe are probably the best in flight simming right now.
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