Quote - Several times on Planetside forums I read comments from the developers of TG2 in which they stated that they strived to get realistic results, but not necessarily by means of physically correct rendering models. I think that a I-look-right-even-tough-math-and-physics-are-wrong lighting/atmosphere model  could be a useful addition to Vue armoury.

W.r.t. to realistics clouds, professional renders use smoke and clouds simulations by means of particle systems. E.g. the nuke mushroom cloud you saw in the sixth season of '24' is the result of the work of two (costly) plugins... and even then, if you compare that sequence with actual nuke footage, you see that the GC rendering is really simplicistic.

Bye!!!

...anyway, we are less than a fortnight from SIGGRAPH...

I've spent lots of time on Vue's lighting settings recently,

put the ambient light from skydome to 1,5 use radiosity and make highlights of your objects to put 70-80% put the second slider to 15-30%, 15-25% light balance and you get about the same results like in the "amazing" TG2 renders, I promise :P. There's not much magic behind it, the renderengines are not really different, it's all about the settings, and by default (and pre-load atmospheres) i must say Vue's light settings look really really really unrealistic, it makes it really hard for the user to find out first.

Quote - Several times on Planetside forums I read comments from the developers of TG2 in which they stated that they strived to get realistic results

right, they made the lighting settings on a universal-preset basis, so more or less everyone is using the same light settings, with variation, not a great deal if you ask me.

What I think is that there are more skilled users using Tg2 than Vue6.5 right now, hm might be an illusion tho.

I will soon kick in some really candy landscapes with Vue i hope :P.