Terrain Trees 3rd Party Software "Nature/Soft Occlusion" required?

I am just curious as to why this is? When I use the soft occlusion shader, the trees look like garbage and the tiling does not work as well as the inability to support normal maps. However, when I use something like "Paralax Diffuse" the trees are beautiful and have depth. I am also wondering if anyone's been able to have trees that look good with the soft occlusion shader. Lastly, I don't mean to sound angry, I'm just looking to see if anyone's made a replacement shader that works with the terrain engine to combat this "issue". Thanks!