I seem to be having synchronization problems, which may be why I was having problems with the amount of shine with certain textures and the VSS prop settings seemingly not affecting anything.

It turns out that they aren't (at least with certain textures) and I don't know why.

Here are my VSS prop settings (AO removed in favor of full scene light based AO). I have Poser Pro, so I changed the VSS Gamma Correction from 2.2 to 1.