Well, Bryce can indeed produce such an image, I feel confident I could do it, but then I have been using Bryce for 10 years and realism has been my goal the whole time. I am prepared for such challenges, I do not think the average Bryce user is, however. This is the issue, Vue allows new users to do this with relative ease, and that means new users can focus more on the other aspects of the render.  That is a good thing.

I feel I have reached a fair degree of familiarty and success with Bryce clouds. I feel certain the problem with most Bryce renders involving volumetrics is poor lighting, as the volumetric models themselves are very good and better than Vue's or Carrara's. What makes Vue clouds look so great is the Full GI, spectral skylighting tool they offer. Clouds need light from all directions, and most Bryce renders only provide light from a few sides, just not enough to look real.

Using Bryce and its cheap tricks for too long can lead one to form very bad lighting habits that must be broken when moving on to software like Vue.

Bryce skylab is full of awful terrible habit building tricks , such as ambient glow and skydome effects. These awful tools give Bryce renders a very false flat and alien look, cartoonish even. The skydome in Bryce is a false trick. The name "dome" implies that light would shine in from all sides, not just from above like a flashlight. But that is exactly what the skydome does in bryce, a mere flashlight shining straight down and this is very unreal. In real life, the sky actually shines from all sides both horizontal and vertical, the sky actually shines more strong light along the horizon than it does from the top or summit because the horizon is usually brighter than the summit of the sky. The summit of the sky is the thinnest air and the horizon is the thickest so it is brighter than the summit of the sky. Most skylight should come from low angles along the horizon. So Bryce skydome is backward, this makes a huge impact when lighting clouds. Vue has better tools than skydome, Vue has true multidirectional skylight,  so it's clouds look better. If you want truly realsitic clouds from Bryce you need surround light such as IBL, but then you need a fast computer to handle the render times.

The other even greater evil than the skydome is the awful standard ambient glow. It is so flat, so many Brycers sadly rely on this effect to correct their shadows. The result is flatness, as ambient glow is perfectly uniform, nothing in real life is ever uniform, especially light! Indirect light is the key to realism.

So my point is, Bryce can do alot of the stuff Vue can do but you can only do it in Bryce if you use Bryce like it was Vue. Good lighting is the same in all apps. Vue provides newbies with advanced solutions. Bryce does not, if you do not know how to do it it will not happen for you. I hope that when the next Bryce is released they will give a more professional level instruction to get people on the road to much greater realism if they want it. Vue should have nothing to hold over Bryce's head.

Forever Bryce!!!!!