One of the first things I've noticed about the new render engine, is not only how much faster it is, but also, it just 'feels' better. I'm not convinced it doesn't render better than Vue6, I think it does-- but the render settings are a bit different and take some time getting used to. The top down bucket render is something to behold, and if GI or Radiosity is checked, then it does a 'pre-render' first, which in some cases can tell you enough about your scene to exit and tweak it.

Each 'bucket' is a square which is rendered by an individual processor. The more processors, the more simultaneous 'buckets' are rendered. I had to go out and purchase a Quad-core as soon as I saw this as it's visibly clear now how 4 are better than 2!

For those of you on the fence about this upgrade, I hope you consider Vue 7 Complete, as IMO it will do much, if not all of what may be needed-- and for $99 V6-I upgrade, it's hard to go wrong :-)

While on paper, Vue 7's upgrade from 6 may seem feature small, I feel much differently about it having used it. The new OpenGL interface is very very nice. The speed and radiosity settings are so much improved. The new fractal textures are great, and the clouds are truly superb.

Overall, memory handling feels more robust. I have had some crashes editing large metablob models, but turning off the OpenGL preference for "Show Boolean and Metablob Previews" fixed the problem with no more crashing. I turned it back on after finishing the modeling part and things work great.

Plus, it appears the new versions will all have the ability to use Python scripts, so products like SkinVue, VueTools and others now have a much wider market, thus enabling developers to actuall afford to develop plugins for Vue.

Overall, I rate this release a very good one.