I decided to go with Vue 7 xStream, despite the cost. It turned out to be a mistake. I haven’t used it enough to justify the expense and when I have, it has been mainly as a standalone application. I can’t get too upset about e-on charging for the insignificant additions in version 7.5. They will be giving away the material-painting feature for free in version 7.4, and that’s the only thing that interested me on the feature list. It seems possible that version 8 won’t have enough new features to justify the price, but I’ll have to wait and see. Every new release comes with its bugs, and some of them can make the software pretty useless. It’s no wonder studios weren’t purchasing because there was no maintenance plan. I’ve never seen software that needed a maintenance plan more. (That being said, version 7 was an improvement in performance and stability and even recognized my video card!) It’s the wave of the future to make the beta-testers pay for the privilege. NewTek is doing the same with Core and has hinted about giving away the next Lightwave 9 upgrade only to those who have joined the pre-release Core club. It didn’t make a lot of people happy but time will tell what the effect will be on the cash flow.

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