Thanks. Those crane (earth mover?) pictures are pure inspiration straight from the distillery of time. 

http://www.statoil.com/STATOILCOM/SVG00990.nsf?opendatabase&lang=en&artid=CACFEF0991487FE4C1256BC2003671D9
Some pics of oil rigs if you need I&R for that, also check out the 'Production facilities' link for some nice industrial sites, and the 'Sn�hvit' page has some good photos too. Skip the 'Corporate executive committee' page unless you want to see terrible old men.

http://www.canadian-wellsite.com/Gallery/gallery.htm
More pics of oil related equipment. 

http://www.arrakeen.ch/thailand/thailandjan03.html

And if for some reason that doesn't inspire you:
http://www.arrakeen.ch/thailand/051%20%20Ann.jpg 

http://users.tkk.fi/~tmaja/kuvia/norja_00/halti2_7_alas.JPG

(at least czg is from that place) 

http://www.hipkiss.org/cgi-bin/maps.pl 

Nice pics ! to your opinion, would it be easy to convert all these ancient maps in a single wad file ? ... I mean a wad file with enough quality for Quake ... ;P 

Why? Easier if someone just extracts the ones they want, and people probably wouldn't want it as original, but preferrably scribbled on more rough pieces of parchment/skin/marble or the like. 

yeah, convert ones u need, but you might loose all the beauty of the high resolution. it's better to use them in moreadvanced engines that supports hi res texes. 

.. was to convert some of these pics in order to use the most interesting one as general HQ strategy maps, like you can find in Wolfenstein, etc... Anyway, I will try by myself to see if it's interesting or not... 

too new maps to fit quake.. 

spirit the sturdy rover and opportunity's twin, has reached the higpoint of husband hill and sent us some nice pics.
These are two samples (they have others and more resolutions too on the site):

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20050831a/Sol500A_Whale_L257atc-A590R1_br2.jpg
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20050901a/Summit_240deg_L256T-A590R1_br2.jpg

I already mentioned someone might make a nice skybox.. after all, quakers are from Mars. 

i thought quakers are from hell...?! 

.. is the mother of all FPS game.... so Quakers are from Hell of Mars ;P 

Check out the concept art for Gears of War, amongst other things.

http://www.johnwallin.net 

that guy is so good, a lot of the paintings look like they're in-game. Thanks for the inspiration Kinn; though that guy has no right to be that talented. 

that at least some of these are not CG. 

or maybe he renders something and then paints over it. 

Jago, CG = computer graphics, using photoshop/painter/etc = CG, so yes obviously those are CG as far as I'm concerned (I kind of doubt he did them with traditional means).
But if you mean 3D renders, yeah, he probably renders some stuff before doing a paint over (but I know it's possible to do that kind of stuff without it really). 

but I know it's possible to do that kind of stuff without it really).

My best friend gave me a Blade Runner city scene print before going back to college, my first thought, 'we would assumed this to be CGI instead of hand painted matte if we did not know its origins.' 

http://forums.sijun.com/viewtopic.php?t=39434&start=30

He's really good, young, self thaught and a nice guy! (I worked with him for a while about three years ago) 

including architecture
http://www.patentroom.com/ 

Map it
http://www.patentroom.com/architecture/images/yawningpig.gif 

http://textures.shedeki.net/she_textures(2).htm 

Thanks for the link. To my surprise, most of those textures are tilable so they can actually be used in a game. 

http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/34709834/m/943001045731/r/325001045731#325001045731

Some AWESOME pics from Huangshan, China.