Quote - The atmos is the default Vue7 atmos - no changes whatsover have been made to it.  So you can see that by just loading up that atmos.

While I do appreciate your willingness to help a smaller scene file IMO would be pointless as if it was smaller & less complex there wouldn't be any issues right?

So, if I am correct in understanding what you say, the smaller scenes have ZERO problem and this happens only on larger scenes? If so, I would deconstruct the larger scene, bit by bit, until I found the 'culprit' issue-- whether it be a poser character, a texture map, etc..

Quote - The image was made in V7I so going back & redoing in V6I is a non starter.

So then, without an apples to apples scene comparison, it would seem to me to be difficult to say Vue7 is signifcantly slower? 

Quote - I'm just not willing to dumb down a scene just so it will render fast(or for testing).  I could do that myself, but don't want to sacrfice my image for it & testing a smaller file would be futile & wouldn't really prove anything as it's not what I'm working on.

Well, that's the only way I know of to try and figure out why your scenes render slower and other people's scenes render faster. Good luck.