I've been rendering complex pictures at very high setting (User Settings) with Vue 7, and though they usually take a while, a day or two, sometimes more, I feel that now that I've upgraded to 7.4 the render times are skyrocketing.  Also, there seems to be a long pause after it initilizes and  the prepass actually begins, especially if I'm rendering at the higher settings.  And when I say pause I mean minutes.  Sometimes a half hour or more, but eventually the prepass begins.  I've only tried rendering two pictures since I upgraded so I cant say with complete certainty that there isn't something specifically wrong with the the pictures themselves that is causing the super-long render times, but I cant figure out why this is happening.  I was just wondering if anyone else was noticing this.

Sorry if this is confusing.....

Also, can I revert back to the last build or do I need to reinstall and all that?  I'm still in the midst of a render (actually, I'm still waiting for it to start) so I cant check right now.....I hope I can, because this has never happened until now and I dont see any really good reason to keep this upgrade if this persists.....

Yes I get a pause before it starts, not minutes though but that's prolly down to me not doing as complex scenes as you do!

Same problem here. Are you using Dynamic EcoSystems?? I have the feeling it has got something to do with it.

So I decided to render the picture at Ultra, and it took a couple minutes to start, the prepass took about an hour, and before I went to sleep it was at 1% and was forecasting that it would take 200+ hours.  But when I woke up this morning it was done, and said it had only take 5 hours, so I guess it just starts slow and then speeds up or something.  I think I'll put it back on User Settings and see what happens....

I always take that forecast render time with a grain of salt.
If Vue is rendering a particularly complex part of the scene, it assumes the whole scene will be of the same complexity.
As for the pause, I don't do any scenes that take days so I haven't experienced it. From my experience there's little difference in render quality between a 2 hour scene and a 2 day one, just MHO.

I have had a similar problem with a scene that had a complex ecosystem and a dynamic one.

A preview render lasted 11 minutes, most of which spent calculating the dynamic ecosystem, while it only took 38 seconds in Vue 7.21.

 I did a test with a Network render of a scene with a looped camera animation and a Dynamic Ecosystem. Each lap is 400 frames. The pre-calculation time is the time before actual rendering starts. Since it is a looped animation the render time is exactly the same at the beginning of each lap. 

Frame 0: pre-calculation time 3 seconds 
frame 400: pre-calculation time 2 min 20 sec 
frame 800: pre-calculation time 4 min 30 sec 
frame 1600: pre-calculation time 9 minutes 

I'm not a scientist, but I would say this proves that the pre-calculation time doubles with each next lap.... 

This was a very simple scene with low density growth. With a more complicated scene, like the one I just did, pre-calculation times went up to 30 minutes per frame after 1600 frames.

For me this renders (no pun intended!) the use of Dynamic Ecosystem useless for now...... 

Attached Link: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_7_infinite/?page=1

The use of multi-processor systems has been enhanced throughout the application, including:

• Multi-cpu panoramic rendering (Windows and Mac),
• Multi-cpu procedural terrain construction (Windows only), and
• Multi-cpu EcoSystem population (Windows only).

This new feature is also available in the Free Vue 7.4 update.

Mazak