In general, the atmosphere wind stuff can be clumsy. It's good for certain kinds of scenes but has many limitations for lighting and ground kinds of settings. Carrara can do everything you've mentioned and I think you have a reasonable grasp of the concepts and rudimentary mechanics of what you're trying to do. There is somewhat of a learning curve for what you're after but a lot of it is pretty easy. Cars and satellites are pretty straight forward. I've done rockets taking off before and that's not super hard. Flying over a terrain could be interesting because the terrain in C could be better but I think it's a pretty manageable thing. -Kix

-Kix