Ok, by bryce25 and poser18 0r whatever you will be able to create a photorealistic 3d world and plug it directly into your brain, aka the matrix. I just hope it won't be running on a microsoft operating system or the 'blue screen of death' may take on new meaning! :(

If you have lights beside daylight in your scene, then enenabling soft shadows or edge softness enabled in light lab, it will bump up your render time like the premium fx soft shadow settings. Also, in many images your can get away with a lot less than 64 rays per pixel.

Bryce bugs the hell out of high end users because it produces very high quality still pics, and on the net the majority of people don't look at movies(where hi-end app's excel), so it gives the immpression that a good bryce user is better than an average, say max user. Another annoyance for hi-end users is that the majority of brycers users are using the software of thier choice, with total control over thier work, where most max/maya/xsi users are producing someone elses ideas on the software thier boss has told them to use! --hope no hi-end boys read this, they might think I'm another uppity brycer! ;)

Attached Link: http://www.bsmooth.de/BSolutions/

Re poly count. I presume that when you create one of these big lumps of grass you set the 'show as box' option in the attribute box? This won't affect your render speed but you can manipulate your scene more easily cos bryce doesn't have to render all those wireframe polys.

Or try http://www.jungle.com They are uk based and sometimes have some good deals.

And if u Alt+click on the 'create terrain' icon it creates a terrain and opens it in the terrain editor ;)

So, a nice technique for sharpening up areas where antialias has 'killed' the texture!

here's more stuff to check. 1.check the website of your CD burning software, see if newer versions of window files have conflicts with your software(some programs overwrite dll files without asking). If you need a specific file for this try www.windrivers.com 2.Are you using B4 and if so have you had the B5 demo installed? If so scan your registry for B5 entry's and delte them. 3.Do you a zip-folder utility intstalled? In certain conditions these can casuse an 'insufficient permissions' type error. the easiest way round this is to COPY a file to a new location. If you UNZIP a backup to a new location, some progams won't be able to use it. That's all I can think of for now!