realistic sand

Hello has somebody an idea for creating realistic sand in 3d. Because using a sand texture isnt really realistic

below is a texture and a normalmap, set the texture type as “bumped diffuse” or “bumped speclar” and there you go

33990-sand.1.jpg
33991-sand-normal.png

Never personally been to the Sahara but, if it were me trying to recreate what I think it looks like for a game, I would use…

  • A relatively simple base mesh that modelled the slope of the underlying terrain, dunes etc.
  • A material using two or more sand textures (perhaps blended together using a splat map), with finer sand or coarser sand depending on aspect of a surface (since I’m assuming that fine sand will have been more likely to blow in the wind and accumulate on certain sides of a dune).
  • A shader that uses the Oren-Nayar lighting model to more accurately portray reflectance off the sandy surface.
  • Particle effect(s) to model sand storms, or dust clouds around the players feet as they walk
  • A heat-haze image effect.
  • And, of course, a decent reference image. Say:
    alt text

well this seems to be a good enough of an answer but isnt there a choice for people who want sand in their game but want extra details like the grain of the sand . and yes i know that might be too much for the hardware these days but i’d figure since CyberPunk2077 exist’s there might be something heavy like this
edit: @bobin115 how can i make the tilling better .every time i make grounds using textures the tilling look wierd on the edges is there a way i havent heard of that can fix that