Ah, I think I am beginning to see what might be going on for some people.

Instead of carrying things over from Bryce 5 into Bryce 7, why not try new things in Bryce 7? Kind of like a new relationship, its hard to get to know the new girl if all you ever do is carry over your feelings for the last girlfriend...who was awesome by the way, just like the new one will eventually turn out to be.

I do not think it fair to judge Bryce 7 by how it handles scenes made in Bryce 5. There are several reasons for this. The first being that there are a lot of changes to the way lots of things work. Booleans are updated, skies are updated, lights are updated...a lack of backward compatibility doesnt mean the application is bugged when used on its own.

Bryce 7 has bugs, huge bugs, for lots of people. Errors with image imports leading to blue madness for Mac users, displacement only works when in low priority, along with a billion other problems. It has unique problems, issues that do not exist in other releases. But they are all beatable, there is a workaround for most of them. Getting to know 7 for 7 is still the best route.

I have found that with most new versions of software I love, I do not jump into the new versions with two feet at first. I dabble, almost always decide I hate it, and depart from it for a while. A month or two down the line I come back to it, and I find I hate it a little less and that I'm findinig my way around and beginning to feel comfortable again. Next day I love the new version. So far this is how it always works in my crazy head. I suspect on some level others might be the same. Take it at our individual paces is the notion.

Bryce 7 enables an entirely different scale of work to be conceived. No more thinking small. We can think BIG now. We can produce vegetation complexity on par with Vue.

Bryce 7 was surely released too early. They spent a good bit of time developing features, too bad they also try to cram in bug fixes at the same time leading to a bottleneck and a premature release. I am basically begging people to look past the obvious problems, and dive into this thing anyway. To go forward we will be building on what we already have in B7.

Save often is a good idea. Always name the file uniquely, so that you dont overwrite a good save with a bad one and lose everything.

Here is a quick link to my personal gallery, most all done with Bryce 7 and all of it with no postwork, raw renders. I love the instancing, the new atmospherics, and the powerful new lighting options. For me, B7 knocks B5 out of the water, in a good way.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?user_id=496780

Best of luck!!