I wonder how big the market is for 3D landscape generators. There was a time when Bryce was nearly the only game in town. Now we have Bryce (soon to be PC-only, dammit), Terragen, Vue d'Esprit, Mojoworld, and Eric's Artmatic3D (sometime), while a lot of the 'straight' 3D packages are also adding landscape and atmosphere effects. Eric may develop ArtMatic3D as a labor of love, but there may be a shake-down and some of the smaller players may find it hard to continue.

The ArtMatic3D samples are stunning, but I'm wary of judging the strength of the product on those alone. Eric Wenger could probably take four melted crayons, a torn sheet of cardboard and a spoonful of rancid spaghetti sauce and use them to produce an image that would break your heart with its wistful beauty. I'd be more interested to see what an ordinary user can do with the same product. Hell, I'd be interested to see what I could do with the product (are you listening, M. Wenger?)

It's possible that ArtMatic3D may produce beautiful renders but have an interface that makes it impossible for most users to attain them. Kai Krause's big contribution was to take Eric's genius rendering engine and put an interface on it that people could use, thus bringing Bryce to the world at large. Bryce's quirky interfaces came in for a lot of criticism over the years, mostly from 'pro' users, but I generally found them very comfortable to work with, and was impressed by the intuitiveness and power of some of their solutions to representation and manipulation problems. Certainly, in terms of giving you access to the power of the engine without drowning you in incomprehensible complexity, it was a masterpiece.

So ArtMatic3D looks exciting, but I hope it turns out to be usable by mere mortals, and I also hope that the entry of yet another competitor to the marketplace doesn't kill off other promising programs.

Of course there's no law that says people can't buy more than one. I have Bryce and Mojoworld, and a copy of Vue d'Esprit is currently in a chocolate-brown truck heading for my house ...