I'm "in between" computers as my real computer is fried and my vroom-vroom new one is in shipment, so I installed Bryce 6 on my workplace laptop, a five-year old Dell that basically sucks. :-)

However, Bryce 6 runs fabulously on it. Very stable, reasonable render times. I can't say that I've seen a speed increase in render time, but this is undoubtedly due to the old low-grade laptop, not anything to do with B6's coding. I'm very excited about seeing how it runs when the new comp arrives ... dual core here we come!

I'm more of a Carrara user but my enthusiasm for Bryce was re-invigorated by this release. I'm going to review Agent Smith's comments on HDRI as my experiements with it thus far have not been as impressive as in Carrara, but I'm still going to give Bryce's HDRI implementation a fair trial over time.

Some have criticized this release for not having enough new features or for not having improved some long-standing ones, but if DAZ focussed on general stability and increased render times at the expense of the gee-whiz factor, I for one think that's more appropriate. It will serve the longevity and future of the app. I look forward to January's point upgrade.