Quote - Vue 8.... that's old stuff :) Vue has improved... a lot. Comparing Vue 8 and Vue 2014 is like comparing Poser 4 and Poser 2014 ;) Days of that slowness are gone!

As for Octane..... it's called demo :) From that demo is was obvious what my investment would need to be on the machine I use poser on, but that's not the only machine I do have :)

Someone did another HDRI map for me recently and her render times were measured in days as well -[ and she was using Vue2014. So I don't think that it has changed. And she is very proficient in Vue. Apparently rendering clouds is extremely time consuming.

If you are talking about investments, Vue Studio is not cheap either