Mapsplitter and tiled terrain input

We are working on a free open source exploration game and I have some questions about the terrain, maybe someone with more experience can shed some light.
I got PLSM to work fine on linux in much less time than expected. The buil horror rumors are wildly exaggerated

I generate my heightmap/textures in World Machine 2 using tiled output. I have an area of 64x64km. Using a tile resolution of 1024x1024 and 12 tiles per side, I get 144 heightmap images with a detail scale of about 5 meters/pixel.
Is there a way to directly feed these images directly into PLSMs MapSplitter without first having to merge them into a single (huge!) file? Do I even have to use MapSplitter when I already have split heightmaps?
Also, is this a reasonable resolution for an FPS game? I feel that 5m/px might lack in detail?
And finally, what visibility range can I expect with PLSM2 and that kind of terrain resolution (or higher) on modern gfx hardware like 8800gt+?

Thanks

The idea of the MapSplitter tool is that you have one huge image file so that it can A) Split it into useable chunks and B) Name the splitted files appropriately according to their position.

Since you already have your images splitted, there's no need to use the MapSplitter tool. However, you will need to name every file appropriately:

Height.0.0.png... Height.1.0.png... Height.2.0.png
Height.0.1.png... Height.1.1.png... Height.2.1.png
Height.0.2.png... Height.1.2.png... Height.2.2.png

x.y being the position of the terrain page. Then you can tell PLSM how to load them.

That's all.

Also, is this a reasonable resolution for an FPS game? I feel that 5m/px might lack in detail?
It's whatever works for you. If it seems to work ok, and there aren't any nasty 'peaks', then you're good to go. Just make sure you keep the ScaleX/ScaleZ the same as PageSize (which happens to be the size of each heightmap).

And finally, what visibility range can I expect with PLSM2 and that kind of terrain resolution (or higher) on modern gfx hardware like 8800gt+?
HUGE. (Seriously)

Thank you very much for the detailed reply, Daniel.
Exporting right away... I'm kinda excited to be honest, I'm really looking forward to see my terrain data in action now

You're losing out on several features of Mapsplitter if you export in chunks directly from WorldMachine. (Unless it supports them natively, in the same formats, which seems unlikely to me.) When Mapsplitter processes your map, it can generate horizon maps that it can use for precalculated occlusion culling, normal maps, a minimap version, and splatting maps.

DM

Sorry to raise this question again, but I think DragonM has a valid point here. Is there no way of inputting spitted heightmap data into mapsplitter? I would think that almost any really large terrain data set is pre-splitted in some way or another?