Not to rain on the parade but there's some things you should consider beyond everyone's comments about rendering etc. Firstly, the mac version of Vue is very buggy. Expect crashes and weird anomolies. Secondly, Nvidia cards and Vue don't like each other very much on the Mac. Vue is much happier with an ATI card on the mac (it's OpenGL issues). Thirdly, Vue doesn't work with Panther (OSX 10.3) - yet. So you'll have to use OSX 10.2.x. Finally, Vue can really bog down on the mac with complicated scenes. Moving/resizing, etc. will start to take forever with lots of objects present (even with the layer hidden). All that being said, your machine should be beefy enough to handle it (especially thanks to the generous ram). It's unfortunate that there's no Demo available as you're taking a bit of a gamble with the Nvidia aspect. I've heard of Mac users with Nvidia cards having lots of issues with OpenGL & Vue. Hopefully it'll work out for you. Lastly - If realism is what you're after then I'd like to suggest you take a look at Terragen. It's not good for close up vegitation work like Vue but for distance Terrain shots, etc. it's fantastic and the realism surpases Vue. Also the Mac version of Terragen is dirt cheap, rock solid and fast. Be warned however, it's very unconventional (as far as 3D apps go) and has a significant learning curve. But check it out - you may like the results. http://www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/ Personally, I use both on my DP G4/450 & ATI Radeon 8500. E.