Hi Karl,

uhm... actually.... my "ASCII Bryce" screenshot is a pure fake. I once made it to tease other Brycers on 1st of April. With success! :)

Though it does contain a rendered Bryce scene (the Obligatory Shiny Sphere Over Checkerboard Plane) which I converted with a BMP-to-ASCII utility and then I created a crude but plausible UI with an editor. Twas nearly as much fun as to Bryce that default scene. (True Landscapers would have used a "Mountain in a Water Plane" instead.)

Now back to true Bryce:
Using stacked planes with cloud-mats for stellar Nebulae is a great idea. I made some of those scenes too in Bryce. And I liked that otherwordly scenes hardly require to look very "realistic", at least compared to our real Nature.

Cheers to Shiny Spheres,
Hubert

"All that we see or fear, is but a Sphere inside a Sphere."     (E. A. Pryce -- Tuesday afternoon, 1845)