you have no (or in post 6) a bad environment-- reflective surfaces have to have something to reflect in order to look right. Try giving yourself a sky dome with a mapped photo. By "bad environment" I mean that the distribution of light, shadow and color isn't very natural-- making it a less good choice as a reflection map. Unless your balls are highly polished ball bearings, they're also too reflective . . . give them a little anisotropy, something to reflect, and they'll be fine. Looking at the link to the discussion on the Maxon board, most of the points made there apply here, too. One good one is about turning down specular. Specular is really just a "fake" form of blurred reflections . . . realworld materials don't have a separate specular and reflective components, specular is more like the scattered component of reflection. . . so for realism, you want to crank specular down if you've got reflection high. simple solution: HDRI/skydome illumination reflection with Yafray makes all metals look good. Also, chrome reads better as an isolated element-- a chrome bumper on a car meets a painted surface, which is less reflective. When you fill your secen with reflective elements, it stops looking like anything other than early nineties raytracing experiments. . .mix very reflective things with other things that are not as reflective. Works better.