I am thinking about buying Vue d'esprit. I went to the E-on website and read the FAQ's. They were all about various bugs in the program and work-arounds for them. It has almost scared me away from buying this software. Would anyone here recommend buying Vue? Is it stable? Are there alot of bugs or compatibility issues?

The main bugaboo so far as Vue 4 goes is the OpenGl implementation. There you get into the good ol 'configuration/drivers/blood sacrifice and hope' mantra. most people wind up turning the OpenGL off, as it only provides preview viewing. Outside of that, I've found both to be very stable; others haven't, and for varying reasons. When something can be duplicated, E-on has been pretty good about getting a patch out to fix it. I would recommend it, and do.

hmmm well I got to say I had LOTS of troubles with Vue at first, and it took me some time to get it resonably stable, Lots of trial and error turning things of and on till it wouldn't crash/lock up. was it worth it... sorta. Vue is great as a veg/landscape program. nothing I have seen to rival it. perticulairly in the price range There is very little doubt that all my troubles were caused by Vue's anti-piracy system and I had to go through a lot of frustration because of thier worring about Piracy. that said... I'd say if you are looking for a good landscape program.. GO FOR IT!!! as long as you're willing to take a few precautions!! 1. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND wiping your drive (with 1/0 overwrite) and re-install system software before installing Vue (this is what I had to do to get it to stop thinking it was a stolen copy) 2. Turn OpenGL off right from the start, turn it on later when you're familiar with Vue so if it starts bugging you'll know why!! 3. make sure all your video drivers are fresh installs and current (Nvidia or ATI) 4. Update Vue to the most current version RIGHT OFF... (at least on Mac.. not sure on Wintel systems what's working these days) 5. get familiar with E-on's web site and thier help system that should do it I believe.. oh ya,.. and come here often.. everyone here is very helpful!!

You will not be disappointed if you buy it....even the few bugs which I don't have any more at all.....is worth it. I am pretty sure the updates have fixed most problems. Sharen

I've never run into any bugs in Vue 4, except for the Open GL problem. (Which probably is not a "bug", just a poor implementation.) And I'm using an older machine with 800 Mhz processors (although 2 of those) and Win2000. I'm a computer tech - as nearly as I can tell, people who've experienced problems have had them primarily because their Windows operating systems are ME, or Windows 98, or XP Home Edition where the latter is set up on a machine whose CPU and RAM sizes just meet the Windows specs. That is, their XP systems are underpowered, or they have somewhat unusual setups. (Fixed a person's machine yesterday who had four different printers and an olde scanner hanging off an older ME system. That kind of thing.) Mac users also seem to have more problems than Wintel users. Technically, Vue is probably the best supported of the landscape programs available at the moment. DAZ may be moving in the direction of providing solid support for Bryce, but they've not yet had time to ramp up a good support system. World Builder and World Construction Set are pretty good, but also have their share of technical difficulties. Personally, Vue's ability to create realistic lighting and atmospheres seems to me to be superior to the other programs. It is also easy to learn to use. But even more important is the ability to use "levels" and to have an object hierarchy list that allows you to manipulate the components of your models. As a person who builds models for many programs, the lack of that feature in other landscape programs means that I don't even try to make good models for those. That is, I can't make a dinghy model for Bryce, say, that a person using that could easily locate and change the hull color if they wanted. Same for World Builder and World Construction Set. I can think of a few features that would significantly enhance Vue, such as the ability to read the file header information in models, so that they would be imported in a consistant size. (Not requiring the user to always re-scale models to get them into correct proportion to each other.) But other than that, Vue is probably the best investment of money you could make in a landscape program. IMHO, of course. Terregen is wonderful too. This is why we support Vue and Terregen on our own commercial www.expandingwave.com site, and not the others.

How do you turn off Open GL? Also, I am wondering if my system is adequate for Vue? I have Intel Pentium 4, 2.80 GHz, 512MB RAM, w/ a Radeon 9200 graphics card. I am really impressed by what Vue can do, but I am not good at fixing PC problems. I'll probably wait another year or so to get Vue, maybe by then E-on will have resolved some of the bugs. Thanks for the replies! :-)

Your system is more than adequate for Vue. Good luck to you.

hey ... just get it. I believe it's way more stable on PC's than Macs. your system is fine for it. (maybe get more RAM if you want it to run in it's perfect world but not needed) as to the OpenGL thing it can be turned off in Vue's Pref's To be honest.. I have been playing with Vue all Week.. a lot!! (got food poisoning bad so I've been home all week) anyway Vue hasn't crashed once this week, so I got it 99% stable :) as to figuring out problems.. that's what we are here for :) and the Vue forums/help system. anyway.. I'd say go for it :)

I'd agree. Just get it. Don't wait a year- that's kind of silly. Not meaning to offend. It's just that if you wait a year, you'll have lost a year's true, deep pleasure in working with the best, most solid landscape modeller around. If you read anyone's technical FAQs, they are going to be focused on/devoted to fixing problems. But they're not representative of the frequency of problems users actually experience, nor, speaking as a tech, are they representative of the most common kinds of problems that do occur. (Despite the term "Frequent..." in the phrase "Frequently Asked Questions.")

I have to echo the responses above. Vue 4 is very stable at this point and have not have much strangeness at all, far less than other programs I've used. I do recommend as others have said to update to the latest version upon downloading the software, as there are some stability issues in earlier versions. I, like many others, also had to shut off OpenGL in Vue 4. It never really crashed on me, but it slowed things down significantly. It's best to run XP or Win2K, rather than 98 though, as the memory management helps with the stability. If you are running Win2K, I did notice a little bit of craziness with sP4 and Vue, but not sure if that was just me or not. All in all, I would say "Go for it!" You'll be glad you did. I switched to Vue from Bryce and will probably never go back. ShadowWind

I've been using it for 2 months now and have not entcountered any bugs at all. The only problem I've encountered is a lack of memory problem, large scenes are quite memory hungry. That's not Vue's fault but I need some more memory for larger scenes perhaps....

i have to repeat what everyone else has been saying, vue 4 is rock solid for me (Except for surprise opengl), so the updates that e-on has put out over time has killed atleast for me any aparent bugs. great app, great price, sure it lacks some things i realy would like to see, mainly flv export(flash video, www.macromedia.com) and gi, of which flv export would be a walk in the part to implement, sure thing i would like to see an even better solidgrowth tool, letting us create new plants aswell, but its as said the best scenery app out there and i love to work with it.

I downloaded the demo of Vue d'Esprit 4. It does not work at all. When I open the program, I get a message saying that there is some kind of error, and Vue has to close immediately. I have several other graphics programs on my PC, including Bryce and Amorphium (demo). I don't have any problems with them. It's a shame, I would love to get Vue, but it's not looking good at this point.

what's the error?