I had my doubts, and still do to some extent about what Bryce 5 is actually offering. We know from info on the net about beta previews that it has an improved render engine with new features, all of which add enormously to render times, but are pretty cool, and long overdue like soft shadows, a form of radiosity, depth of field blur etc. (although it would be quicker to do this in an image editor anyway) and from what I have seen of a couple of images posted lately in the Bryce gallery, it appears to have blurry reflections and possibly a type engine!? - also, a vegitation system like in Vue may now be in place. these are all nice touches and will for a lot of people, make the upgrade worthwhile. I for one would like to see a bit more modelling capability built in for simple spline/path creation but I wouldnt count on it! - I am interested to see that Vue will be available for the Mac at long last, particularly OSX! as Mac users will definately feel the speed benefits in rendering combined with the G4-G5 chipsets!

Adam Benton | www.kromekat.com