please also bear in mind that not all bunkers are grassy fringed pits of terror like Rugged Dune
Well, in my opinion they should be! (I'm a little partial to rustic rugged natural blowout bunkers)
Where the comparisons with the Links engine have to stop is when you realise that Links used subdivisions in their meshes which mean the closer you got to the mesh, it split itself into thousands of tiny polygons automatically which is why you simply cannot run Links in real-time. Try turning on the 'hull' option in APCD to see what I mean.
Real time engines cannot do this as there are way too many polygons to push around the screen but they do have other advantages which more than compensate.
Not sure I follow this ("turn on the hull in APCD to see what I mean") - obviously you can have the primary mesh visible (or not), but when zooming in to the mesh from a distance I don't see any difference between hull on or off. Could be a subtle effect that my older video card can't render?
The faces in an APCD mesh appear to be similar size to faces in the Unity/CF mesh images you've posted - are you saying that the Links engine further breaks down mesh faces into smaller polygons for final rendering?
I think I'm in a similar camp with Lez & Stephen, I'm just wondering how much leeway there will be for non-uniformity. I understand that you're focusing on the ability of Unity/CF to quickly produce perfectly acceptable looking bunker lips (which is a definite advantage over APCD), but do the Unity/CF tools have fine enough resolution to add some variation to better mimic natural differences in color/texture/depth that occur around bunker lips?