Jon, I read that other thread you point to, and tested the Promenade scene and it runs fine on my system. What OS are you using?

Just so you know, the question marks in the other scene are caused by unrecognized Japanese characters (the artist who created the scene is Japanese).

You seem to say you have problems with all sample scenes. Since you are adamant that your system is not the culprit, there must be something very wrong with your install of Vue... I suppose you have already tried re-installing the application?

Regards

Mike