Looks like a zoom on a digitally generated image to me except for the disappearing greenery as the "camera" passes - reminds me of old video game programming.
I should have included this additional info: The link I provided is representative of dozens this company provides of holes of actual golf courses in the southeast. Golf courses contract with them to create virtual 3d tours of their course. I am curious what technology they might be using - going by memory of some of the courses, the general layouts look very accurate to the courses they are representing. I can't imagine that they would build these from scratch with a 3d modeling tool - must be something more automated than that.
Sorry,
might not be free at the moment. I got a free version just before a new version was released and then paid next to nothing to upgrade. But I think if you dig around you might still find the old versions for free.
With regard to the original subject, with Bryce you don't have to build real landscapes from scratch, someone has written a tool to translate topographic map data into Bryce.
Be warned, I like others got sucked into the whole Bryce / DAZ Studio vortex, you could spend / waste a heck of a lot of time in there. I've built a couple of things that I used in paying jobs so I shouldn't complain. I did learn one thing without burning a hole in my pocket, 3D is best left to specialists.
Well it looks good but not very detail so something like BoomToon may have done it. Looks like he render every 4th frame so that maybe why the trees disappeared. Some other 3d programs are Veu, Maya, and Poser has many links. Learning curve for this stuff can go on for ever. I have Poser, Veu and Silo. Been working on these these for almost 2 years. point being they say it takes a good 4 years to be any good at it. I believe it.
Poser link http://my.smithmicro.com/win/poser/index.html
Veu link should be on this site also.