You are likely to get biased opinions by asking that question in a Vue forum, the only way to answer the question to your satisfaction is to try demos of both and make your own mind up. A lot will depend on what kind of artwork you want to produce, if its exclusively landscape work, heavy with vegetation then Vue is probably better but if you want to vary your images, specially with Poser figures, then Carrara takes some beating. The Carrara render engine is far better (and faster) than Vue's but to balance this up, Vue's ecosystem feature, coupled with solidgrowth 2 plants, is definitely more powerful than the surface replicator in Carrara. I use both programs myself and tend to split the work between them fairly evenly, depending on what each job entails. If I had to choose between the two, then I guess I would have to go with Carrara as it gives me more versatility, better render engine, built in modeling and a more powerful shader (materials) system.