Something missing?

Props on what you have, very realistic. Maybe some mountains/hills on the right side?

 

realism... make it more realistic

 

The lines are too consistent, make them more random. Right now it looks like a canyon made of bacon.

 

its too clean to be realistic... in other words, the ground cant be perfectly flat, it needs some vegitation, and obviously the lines in the canyon need variation, and the water needs to look more watery instead of blue.

 

k wait a second. you have signs of erosion due to gravity.... (the shape of the sides of the canyon) but then the horizontal lines. u should totally fix that

 

The lines in the canyon are layers of compacted sediment, and the canyon itself is carved by erosion from the river more than anything.

 

Put evil caneval on there. that oughta spice it up!

 

Cacti and desert shrubbery.

 

I think it would look nicer if it had some more shrubbery/cacti, which has been mentioned, but would look a bit more realistic if you added some bumps and holes along the desert. It looks flat... too flat.

 

Needs some rock texture on the sides of the canyon.

 

it looks like its missing something because the sand texture is like a pattern repeated over and over and over and over and over and over, so it looks bland and there are no points of interest on the ground. look at some photos of these sort of environments, you'll se that there are bits of the ground that will stand out more than others

 

The shadows are far too harsh. You have to think of this realisticly, the sand is a bright colour, so there will be plenty of light reflected and bouncing around everywhere. The contrast between light and dark will be fairly minimal, and the edges of shadows will be noisy.

After that, the colours should probably be returned to a more orangy colour, atleast for rockfaces.

 

V3 is looking much better, but I agree with Matty that the shadows are too harsh. I thought the water looked better before, too: I think that it could use some waves or reflection-y things.