Hah!  I love your quote there, Silverblade33...

I also started with Bryce 3(d!), and RayDream Studio 5.  You're right about coding though...  Truth is there aren't many differences between Vue's (or other rendering engines) abilities and CryEngine's or Unreal's when it comes to output, mostly just heavy-duty functions, but the difference is that Crysis and Unreal are still obviously video games, no matter what machine they are running on.  Vue and many other packages are capable of photorealism if not actual realism, or at the very least painterism.

I like the new generation of video games a lot too, but I don't think they're any more groundbreaking than Unreal 1 or the Quake 3 engine from 1999 in terms of their impact on the VFX industry.