1) The texturing options are... limited.
2) The detail texture fades out way too quickly, and there's no way to increase the distance at which it's applied.
3) I got a crash when trying with a 1025x1025 terrain size, but that MAY have been user error in the config file.
4) However, things shouldn't crash because of bad data.
5) And while the documentation says that the terrain can be put into pages, the Heightmap page source actually only deals with a single page.
I know there's a Paged terrain scene manager for Ogre, which looks good on paper. It is, however, only available as a source checkout as far as I can see, and has lots of dependencies I don't want to go track down. I'll wait and see whether it'll show up as a built SDK for 1.4, and maybe I'll switch to it then.
Meanwhile, I'm accepting the warts! Really!
In other news, I wrote a simple state machine manager, which I intend to use to drive the top-level game state. (Main menu / loading level / in config screen / etc). Hopefully, starting at the top will let me avoid the "demo syndrome."
2) See #1
3) Make sure PageSize is 1025 and the texture is 1025x1025(NOT 1024!)
4) It probably throws an exception in Ogre.log, have you checked?
5) If you need paging, you should be using the Paging Landscape Scene Manager anyways...(Tuan should have a 1.4 SDK out soon..)
Anyways, if you need any help with TSM, don't hesitate to ask :)