Need some help on a problem I'm encountering in Vue...

I get the following error when I try to render:

Over 1853 MB of physical memory (RAM) are required to perform the rendering of this scene.  This requirement exceeds your current system resources....

My system has 4 GB of RAM, of which Windows appears to recognize 3.5.  In the Task Manager, I see that I currently have about 2.5 GB of RAM available. 

I am using Vue 5 Infinite and Win XP Pro.  Can anyone tell me what's going on here, and what I can do to correct it?

Someone more knowledgable will step in here and correct me if I'm wrong but with 32bit Win XP each application can only access a maximum of around 2 GB.  So once you've taken out the space for the software itself running you get the amount required.  Having the other 1.5GB isn't a waste though as the OS and anything else your running can use that leaving Vue with more memory to work with.   Unfortunately  solving this will involve  upgrading your OS to a 64 bit version so it can access all of your RAM and that may require hardware upgrades too.  I can't remember if Vue 5 Infinite had 64 bit support or if that only came in with Vue 6.  Sorry not to have an easy or cheap fix.

It would seem that you have a too complex scene for a 32 bit system. Assuming you don't want to upgrade your system, I suggest either simplifying your scene or spliting it in several parts, render each one separately and merge them together in PS.
If you chose to simplify, the first thing to attack (because it's simple and because it's a real memory consumer) would be textures of Poser figures, if you have any. This has been treated in other threads in this forum. As to the rest, it depends on what else you have on your scene.

Thanks guys....I ended up doing two things to get this image to work.  First, I ended up eliminating 5 of the lights I had in the scene.  This will create more postwork for me, but it cut the overall memory cost by about half a gig.  Next, I used (am using) the area render to divide the scene into fourths.  It's currently rendering the 2nd fourth, and it is currently estimating about 14 hours to complete.  The odd thing to me is that the 1st fourth never estimated above 5.5 hours, and actually finished in just over 4.  I'm not sure why the huge disparity.  I mean, there is a little bit more water and light in the 2nd fourth than the 1st, but not that much.  Fortunately, the 3rd and 4th fourths have absolutely no water, and a far less light, so I think those will go relatively quickly. 

You realy cannot rely on the "estimated" it is based on what the software sees immediatelyor the area it samples, in relation to the size of the image. 

That means that if the software samples a small protion of the bottom of the scene and it is very complex only half way up the image with a standard none complex sky it may overestimate.  Which would usually indicate a long time and then process in real time much sooner that estimated.  This can easily occur the other way around, short estimations and long processing times.

Proceduaral terrains and lighting are often the culprits that extend the processing times. 

A better method of spot sampling areas all over the image might give a more accurate time of processing.