Yep, dave. I added lights. Being smart (or at least, not completely dumb), I filled in my time waiting for DS by reading what people were doing wrong, so I picked up on that one. Right, veritas. I need way more RAM, not to mention a new machine, but I'm stcuk with this one for a couple of months more. What I have noticed is that the status bar initially shows DS 'optimising' each texture in the scene, but I started timing AFTER it had done that. Oh well... Good tip about hiding, I never thought of that. mac