I also remember 'mars.com', that I guess I found on some bbs, which was basically just the terrain renderer you could roam about in a very basic heightmap that was coloured to resemble mars. I think I saw that before comanche, and it was fast on fairly mediocre pc back then.

I don't know if it is just me and the appeal to the stuff I grew up with, but I find the style of the visual artefacts a lot more appealing than in many more modern rendering techniques. Perhaps it is just the simplicity of it.