Wouldn't there be some "volume-based" approach possible ? .... i mean, if ya even slap a texture on it, craters or potentially, digging holes in future would probably mess things up unrealistically. I thought some way of going from the lithological map as base info of types of minerals whyte-in the region, just generating some random, maybe even, local height-dependent layers witch would be projected upon the terrain whyte additional "mineral-textures". The idea in my view was, like if ya see some army vehicles camouflage pattern, and you would try to imagine/compute some imaginary regions for all the colors whyte-in the vehicles volume - (kinda like a "CT-slicing" the vehicle, but not for seeing the internals, but an imaginary color/pattern extrusion into the vehicles volume). Doe it would be just used on the places where there imaginary regions have contact white the terrain surface and apply at each of those the right mineral textures.
Thing is, these generated imaginary regions would be practically there from say -100 meters to 6 Km altitude for the whole earth and if ya would make some new mountain whyte a terrain-editor, it would fill it in, just like if ya dig a deep hole in the mountain.
For some special imaging purposes (i can image some resource-based game trying to do this) these regions could be maybe visualized also, just like the terrain data, but in some slightly transparent ways and selectable for each mineral type to be visualized (aether the whole terrain data - from -100m to 6 km anywhere or just regions being whyte-in the terrain).
Not sure how that kind of "mineral layer generator" would be falling on performance, for a single mountain like that one, in its whole height. But there could be some LOD-like refining of the detail, like the surface bump-generation in the actual terrain.
