This may or may not be relavent to the thread other than an observation about trends in software users here at R'osity.  Browse the poser gallery.  Now browse the Carrara gallery.   There seems to be more nekid Vickies in low quality renders in Carrara than Poser. 

I think the Poser crowd buys a lot of stuff at Daz and they have been seduced into purchasing Carrara while there.

...back on subject...,  for this hobbiest,  there is a lot of things the other 3d packages can do that Bryce can't.  But, there is a lot of stuff that Bryce can do if you dig for it.  Now if it were only rock solid bug free and someone would publish a road map to DTE I would be happy for years to come.
Bryce is old (so am I)
Bryce renders are slow (so am I)
Bryce is cheap (so am I)
Bryce is beautiful (so am, oops)