Quote - The reason they do Infinite as PLE is to suck you in :)

It worked.

Quote - As a hobby user, a lot of people don't need Infinite at all, but they still buy it after using PLE. It has a slightly different UI for a number of functions that simply work better then the Artists versions. It of course offers a number of features that the Artist versions lack. I tried the PL version first and also the 30 day trial of Studio (the version I wanted to get). I had a hard time going from PLE to the Studio trial, you right away miss certain features and notice that PLE has a better setup then the Artists versions. To this day, I still miss a number of features.

All of the Artist versions of Vue went on sale the other day, for 25% off through July 6.  I was only $70 away from 2014 Complete (the version I started this thread for) when I found out, so I downloaded the 30-day trial.

Ho-ly cow...

Just in terms of aesthetics, the differences in the UI between Complete and the Infinite PLE are like night and day.

And good luck to anyone finding a tutorial that actually uses 2014 Complete, or active support forums.  The Kickstart Tutorial off the Help menu even points to a low-quality, non-controllable, browser-run SWF video that uses Vue 6!  By low quality, I mean it's all text-based, and the menu options in the version they use are completely illegible.

Even worse, neither version is compatible with my 3D mouse.  That alone is a deal-breaker for me, I don't care how powerful Vue is.

I'm going to stay away from Vue altogether, and stick with pre-fabbed Poser content.  There's a really nice looking Enchanted Forest at DAZ3D that will suffice for my interest in creating woodsy death scenes, and my Poser/Reality/Lux workflow will let me do great things with it.

Now I just have to figure out what else to do with the $530 I've saved.  :)