Sascha, you have already sen the message Orio posted somewhere else as an answer to your wishes. I know Orio has nothing aganst I publish his answer here for you but also for other Vue users. My english is not good anough to express myself as clearly. But what Orio wrote is an important point for all of us Vue users. Let's think before we "wish". Please read! """ there are two things that people too easily forgets about: 1) Vue is a $199 application (slightly higher price in Europe unfortunately), it is just too unfair to expect it to perform as a $1,500 application. I prefer to see the glass half-full instead, and say that for the $199 it costs, Vue sports an incredible amount of power that applications that are closer in price often do not offer. 2) Vue is basically a landscape program, and although it can do all sorts of renderings, to test it under the magnifying glass in a typical non-landscape rendering situation is not doing it right. It would be like judging Rhino for it's rendering options. Vue is not made to offer perfect interiors still life rendering, a situation where even a single pixel can cause problems (those with photographic experience know that it's the same, the degree of accuracy required for a still life is much greater than for a landscape). Vue is engineered to offer great looking 3D landscape scenes with people, trees, animals, rocks etc., with great options and realism at an extremely affordable price, and that's what it does and it does it the best way around, in my humble opinion. It is true that to get rid of most artifacts of soft shadows, one has to render with the highest settings (and high rendering times). It is also true, from my point of view, that is better to have one great detailed and accurate scene with a great render than 5 rushed scenes with rushed renderings. It's quality against time, it's not only a Vue problem, it's a common issue. Maybe there are applications who offer a better balance of quality-times, but at a somewhat 10 times the price of Vue, also... so... The truth getting down to this simple bit in the end: if you have a great picture, give it all the rendering time it deserves, and nothing less. If you have a not-so-great picture, maybe it would be better to ask yourself if it deserves to be rendered anyway, or if maybe it deserves some more working time to make it better and valuable for a longer and highest quality rendering. I end up asking this question myself many times, and with the time passing, I do less and less pictures, but those that I make, I try to make them the best that I can. In normal _landscape_situations, a setting of 5 of soft shadows should be enough to handle most soft shadows needs and obtain great results with quality rendering. Sometimes you might find the need to have higher than 5 values. Then just render that particular picture at the highest quality settings. That's what I do and I can say I can get great results. Keep in mind that there is a difference between Ultra and the highest user setting. It is noticeable. Ultra should be enough in many cases. But with extreme settings, always go for "user" at maximum boost. Orio"""