The posts basically stopped in this thread for two reasons:
1. because the basic LOD generation process seemed to be more or less solved, and
2. because I started working on a mod for Oblivion.

Generating heightmaps from RAW files is a different beast entirely, and shouldn't affect the LOD generation process. I can't really tell you anything about that, though, because I don't have access to software that handles the kind of RAW files required by the Geck. (I use the Gimp.)

I'm toying around with a new FO3 mod idea, so I might be around the forums if you have any questions about LOD. Can't guarantee I'll know the answer, of course.

I have some questions related to LOD data, but I didn't want to hijack this thread, so I created a new one: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1084924-objects-with-has-tree-lod-flag-set/

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for the info,

One of the reasons for messing with RAW directly was to create clean and correct heightmaps and get rid of error in LOD generating since height editor sooner or later will stab you from behind crashing the landscape. Since you get this 9 hour penalty when generating I started to use landscape editing directly and have so far got much bigger landscapes in one or two hours.
However landscape editing is not flawless either, I still got some errors regarding flipped triangles? It can be a bit tiresome to smooth out the landscape in the hunt for the erroneous part that don't pass generation. Any tips to create landscape correct from the beginning?

The LOD generation speed benefit is amazing but the landscape tool itself is really limited, very well at least I can start creating something usable.

I actually made a little tool to convert the Q1-4.RAW files to .PGM but Gimp can only import but still saves only in 8bit format, Bethesda RAW is 16 bit. Also made it able to export correctly to 16 bit BMP. You can look at it with Paint and Gimp but not edit easy. Still to be useful much bigger heightmaps than 2048x2048 would be needed and to scale and import export all needed RAW G.E.C.K. files will I think be more job than fun.