Bryce has been one of my favourite programs but I am really ambivalent about the B5 upgrade. It is too early to tell but in many respects B5 seems to be playing catch up with Vue. Vue of course has also moved on and the latest version seems to make it somewhat more Bryce-like in some respects. People claim that Vue already provided substantially faster rendering times than Bryce and ver 4 is supposed to be another 40% faster- makes it difficult to get excited about a mere 12% speed increase in Bryce 5. Metaballs have never struck me as a particularly versatile or precise method of 3D modeling so that doesn't excite me either. Unlike Vue, B5's vegetation seems to be limited to trees and, if so, again loses in comparison. Overall B5 appears to me to be an incremental upgrade providing little that has not already been available elsewhere. Yet Corel has still seen fit to increase the price by approx 25%. A competitive side-grade to Vue4 is only $10 more than a Bryce4 to Bryce5 upgrade so Corel is hardly doing its user base any favours. Until now I have preferred Bryce over Vue for its crisper renderings and its superiority in creating abstract imagery. But Vue 4 may well have addressed those issues. Overall, I have the vague feeling that Vue 4 and Bryce 4 may ultimately give me greater versatility than Bryce 5 alone. Further compounding my decision difficulties is that I can upgrade an old copy of RayDream 3D to Carrara Studio for only $150. That will give me Carrara, Amapi and a pile of accessory items. Certainly B4 plus Carrara Studio will give me a lot more potential (including metaballs) than the same money spend on the B5 upgrade instead. I may still upgrade to B5 but I think I'll wait to see some more imagery and opinions from users of both upgrades first. A major concern for me is that Corel is notorious for selling software that is complete garbage in its initial version release. Typically it takes about 6 months before their patches actually make the program usefully reliable. In the end I suppose it depends upon whether my love for Bryce is sufficient to overcome my complete contempt for Corel.