I am concerned to hear of the Mac OSX slowdown!?!? - thats utterly ridiculous! - the most efficent and supposedly fastest operating system ever, coupled with the best hardware/processor/system buss (ie: the G4) there has been, with a program syupposedly written for that system, and its slower????? - whats going on Corel?? - that apart from a few other features that are just about worth having, was a prime incentive for me to upgrade! - I heard it said previously by someone that OSX would bring about a 40% increase in render times in br5!? - what happened to that then?? I absolutely adore Bryce 4, despite some limitations which should have been sorted out a long time ago, and was dearly looking forward to a Bryce 5, but I must admit, when Metacreations bailed out I was daunted about its future, then there was talk of Adobe getting involved and that was exciting, but when I heard Corel had it, I did wonder whether they had the balls to do something professional with it, given that they have had nothing much else to shout about. Ah well, only time and the new batch of guinea pigs can tell us whats really wrong with it and whats worth having!

The last alternative other than good texturing, would be to use the old terrain trick! -its a bit heavy on the RAM and proccessor, but if you need that spiky grass effect, then that is a simple way to do it! for those that dont (where have you been?): Create new terrain, Open terrain editor, wack up the res to 1024, clear the teerain to black and hit the spikes button, adjust to taste, vary the levels a bit if you like and colour it green! :) - just remember to lower the res of the terrains that are further from you to save slowdowns!

There would be no reason why it wouldnt support twin monitors that i can see since all elements of the interface are detachable. The twin processor question is one that I have been wondering about, but from what I have heard, Bryce will only support single processor rendering except when on a network via TCIP. This seems like an incredibly stupid oversight from Corel! - Particularly given that they have optimised it for OSX on the Mac which is completely MP savvy!! - DOH!

good question, well to be honest, I would be amazed, given the duration since bryce 4 and the supposed stack of new features, that they would ommit a new manual. In my experience previously, bryce upgrades have been exactly the same as their full brothers, new box, new manual , the lot!

Thanks willf, it does seem a tad shortsighted to offer network rendering capabilities and yet not make MP rendering built into Bryce itself given that it has been written for OSX which as you said, is fully MP aware!

being a Mac user also, this concerns me too! - The new bryce 5 (beta at any rate) doesnt work any faster on OS9 than 4 does, if anything it was a fraction slower, which was rather dissapointing! - but it is 'supposed' to be a labout 30-40% faster on OSX! - whether those with dual processors will benefit greatly is still a question i would like answered!

Such is the Mac architecture that If you had gone from the pIII 500 to a single processor G4 500, you'd have noticed an imense difference since any OS before OSX doesnt support true multiprocessing, neither does Bryce. So with the new OS you'll see (I hope!) an even larger speed up!

Hardly a bank breaking price for the full or ipgrade now is it!? - One of the great advantages of Bryce as far as I am concerned, is the fact that it carries a hobbyist price tag and offers incredible power - ok its not lightwave/maya/soft image, but then, its not meant to be! - once again, 'true ambience' does that suggest radiosity to anyone!? - just wait and see. What have multi-processing macs got to do with the net render option? - sure may help speed things up, but this feature is to link several machines together with a master/client render process. I agree about Corel not announcing the featurelist accurately, but this will be because some features may not make this version on time. Either way, given the expected release date, there should be more public info by now!!

See your points tradivoro! - terragen looks cool! - must check it out!, but some 'facts' are wrong pnevai, bryce 4 's highest terrain res is 1024, which more than enough for most uses anyway, but as I also said bryce 5 is 4 times that! - and yes, soft shaows and radiosity are in b5!

Soft shadows, true ambience (which I assume is radiosity) blurs etc are all in the new render engine, but yes, they are equivalent to Volumetrics in render time! - having said that, with the Mac platform, specifically OSX on g4, render times should be greatly improved over the competition. Now that I have seen the 'other' features mentioned above, there is no question, its definately worth it! - and net rendering guys!! - gotta be useful!

It is a pretty much irrelevant point anyway since it doesnt take any longer to make a great terrain in Bryce. As was pointed out, you simply up the resolution of the terrain to get rid of the jaggies, takes milliseconds! - Bryce 5 is capable of much higher res terrain generation, 4x current top of 1024 (it was in beta 1 anyway according to a friend!) this will mean much more complex terrain detail in just one mesh. You dont need to work hard at Bryce, you just need to know how it works to get good results, and its far from complex! - other features in Bryce 5 as already discussed on another thread will make it a worthy upgrade alone!

I have already stated what most of the new features (that I know) of will be above! - there are a few more fx options I believe. But I agree, Corel should be promoting the items that will definately be in place by now!

I have already stated what most of the new features (that I know) of will be above! - there are a few more fx options I believe. But I agree, Corel should be promoting the items that will definately be in place by now!

I had my doubts, and still do to some extent about what Bryce 5 is actually offering. We know from info on the net about beta previews that it has an improved render engine with new features, all of which add enormously to render times, but are pretty cool, and long overdue like soft shadows, a form of radiosity, depth of field blur etc. (although it would be quicker to do this in an image editor anyway) and from what I have seen of a couple of images posted lately in the Bryce gallery, it appears to have blurry reflections and possibly a type engine!? - also, a vegitation system like in Vue may now be in place. these are all nice touches and will for a lot of people, make the upgrade worthwhile. I for one would like to see a bit more modelling capability built in for simple spline/path creation but I wouldnt count on it! - I am interested to see that Vue will be available for the Mac at long last, particularly OSX! as Mac users will definately feel the speed benefits in rendering combined with the G4-G5 chipsets!

I too have had this problem where meshes are seperated and puzzle like. Sometimes if you ungroup the entire object and select (assuming you can make any sense of the objects structures) parts of the mesh, you may find that a simple 180 rotation might resolve the problem. it appears that parts of the meshes are rotated around central axis on occasion!