Quote - I wouldn't necessarily suggest getting it soley as an alternative general purpose renderer. Not that it can't serve in that role but it would be kind of like getting a Ferrari for the daily commute. If you just want a very cool application, it's worth it as well IMO.

Well, I actually do want it specifically for outdoor stuff, especially weather effects (definitely would get the zephyr module for wind).  Also, I've been working on cityscapes and I understand Vue has some powerful replication tools that might be useful in creating large futuristic settings. 

I'd like to start establishing a story, creating a library of characters and props.  I'd like the characters to look consistent throughout, I wouldn't want them to look too different between indoor scenes done in Poser, and outdoor scenes done in Vue.  That's why I wondered how Vue would handle a typical indoor Poser scene with a figure or two and props.

I have Carrara 6-8, and planned to take another look whenever it got a stable release.  I found some bugs right off the bat but kept upgrading anyway...  Having it be in beta for an enternity has put me off somewhat.  It also seems like it has put others off as well, Sparrowhawke's plugins for example haven't been updated in years (I always assumed I'd need a few of them for any serious project) and who knows if they will continue to work as Carrara is slowly tweaked with.

The bigger problem with Carrara is the same one I'm afraid of running into with Vue, that you can't just drop something in from Poser and have it look the same without a lot of fiddling.