Just found these tests I did. They were actually render time tests, so I know exactly how long they took... but I'm not going to tell you. It wouldn't be fair as they weren't done with even the most recent beta, let alone the final release, and I know some things in the render engine have changed since. I'd never looked at them side by side like this before though and, now I have, I feel like adding some comments about render times, and the incredible variety of choices Vue 5 offers.

First off Global Ambiance. E-on have hardly mentioned this lighting model, and it doesn't look too great in this test, but for outdoor scenes it gives a huge quality boost over the standard (Vue 4) render, with hardly any time overhead. A real boon to the animators here.

While radiosity does carry, as Agiel said, 'a good price tag in terms of time', I guess that most of us have, like me, been faking it with numerous lights (which also add to render times) and then spending a heap of time doing test renders, tweaking colour, intensity and position over and over... now you just check the radiosity button, and all that work is done for you! Sure the final render is going to take a while, but compared to the whole process of setting up umpteen lights?

All the new lighting models have quality sliders that allow you to degrade, as well as improve, your render quality versus time. An almost infinite set of choices.

If the release version proves stable on a majority of user's machines, I think e-on have a real killer app here.