I have the opposite problem. I have too many ideas of illustrations and would need several lives to complete them all, as well as learning a lot of new skills. I need to priorize them, note my ideas, make some sketches and more generally be serious about it or the ideas will queue on forever.

I get my ideas from novels, music, paintings, photographs. I also end up playing with models I have purchased or downloaded, or with Geocontrol, or with Vue itself.
I think novels and music are the good sources of inspiration. I always think of how I would illustrate a scene in a novel or a song.

I like these words of Kai Krause:
*Spend your life in the eternal bliss of always having something to hope for, something to wait for, plans not realized, dreams not come true…. Make sure you have new points on the horizon, that you purposely create. And at the same time, relive your memories, uphold and cherish them, keep them alive and share them, talk about them.

Make plans and take pictures.*

Cornucopia has the exact buildings you are looking for. Alas, not for free.

http://www.cornucopia3d.com/store.php?sel_dir=Objects/Architecture/Large__Buildings/Historical&level=3&sel_type=Objects

I have also seen weird artifacts when keeping this button checked and while modifying a scene. It took me a while to figure out why there were large shadow dots in my renders!

I have also used it in a Vue picture.

I think it is most efficient on ruins and other old architecture.

I suspect that their system sent reminder notices about open and unresolved tickets, in an attempt to see if they were still valid and close them.

I have also had the message warning me of the new beta after opening a ticket yesterday, but given the list of corrections, I do not think it will solve my problem.

Here are my tries :
Geocontrol vs Vue renders
4 viewports in Vue

Try to use bilinear interpolation if you use images in procedural terrains. This may solve the moire problem.

That said, I kind of understand your problem is Paula. Geocontrol generates very nice terrains, but they generally cover large areas. Once imported in Vue, you may want to place the camera at eye level and thus have two issues:

• you only see a small part of the superb terrain you have designed in GC2
• you are so close to the terrain that you see artifacts as the area you visualize lacks resolution

I think GC2 generates terrains at a scale that is often too large for us, even when keeping the parameter: "Amount of details" to 0.

I did a two part tutorial about Geocontrol terrains imports in Vue last year, but will need to update it since things have changed a bit in Vue 7.
You can now have a good detail level using standard terrains instead of procedural ones.
The strange artifacts that appeared on the sides of procedural terrains are gone. Even if you use them, there is no need to upscale them (and their textures) to 1.01.

Renderosity should make a 301 redirect from all their secondary domain names (whatever they are) to the main one.
This would prevent this kind of interrogations from users and also make the situation towards search engines better. At the moment, Rendo has 16200 pages indexed under the domaine Renderocity in Google and 92 external links to it.

Geocontrol 2 adds interesting features to the software:

• isolines that enable you to shape terrain the way you want
• new erosion systems
• exportable selections I use to drive material ventilations in Vue
• vector tools to make roads
• rivers and lakes

To get a quick view of what Geocontrol 2 can make, check out this demo video.
You can also download the terrain sample I make available in my Geocontrol 2 Vue tutorial.

All realistic landscape images are not done with a wide angle lens and close up foreground. The first three examples I have posted are more distant views.

And to be honest, I would add that the Terragen render engine also plays a role in the images realism. On this image (still by Luc Bianco) the lighting on the mountains is quite realistic.

Here are some examples of my tries with "bare terrains" in Vue:

I must say that this kind of exercise is quite tricky. To try to get realistic results, I generally:

• Use Geocontrol terrains with exported material distribution maps. Material distribution is key to getting your terrain to look realistic (Terragen does this quite well).
• Use bitmap materials for some of the rocks (but I may try some of Monsoons procedural rocks materials)
• Use specific lighting (low sun, sidelighting or sun in front). This hides some of the less realistic looking areas while emphasising the shadows.

The one thing I still have not mastered is the use of rocks in these landscapes. Terragen uses elaborate displacement materials such as the ones you can see in this image (by Luc Bianco)

Using this type of material, you are able to get realistic looking rockslides on a near infinite surface. So far, I have not been able to duplicate this in Vue as my knowledge of the material editor is lacking. It is a problem for wide angle views such as the above one as you need to get a realistic foreground AND background.

Another thing I noticed with this kind of image (in Vue or Terragen). Most of the times, if you get a good looking bare landscape and add a couple of trees, it instantly looks less realistic.

If you want to mimic the natural chaos of nature, you need to cover your whole landscape with realistically distributed plants.

Here is an example of what I mean:

I used an Infinite ecosystem for this one, but I noticed that for for more "open" landscapes, you need to stretch your infinite ecosystems very far to get grass in the distance, otherwise you see the limit to which it is applied.

In order to get the most realistic landscape possible, you need to pay attention to everything: terrain shape, material distribution, lighting, ecosystem objects distribution. Quite a difficult task!

Since i use VUE i look  " different"  at the sky's   The funny thing is that i oftenly see real sky' s /atmosphere's and then i think..  If i would create that in VUE it would look like a fantasy scene.

When I started using Bryce, this happened to me regularly. I wondered how I would recreate such or such sky.
After this, I switched to photography and my concerns were different. I wondered which filter (ND grad, reverse ND grad) I would use to capture a scene properly.

I chose Infinite over complete because it has:

• 90 bonus plants
• multipass rendering (though the feature did not work at start - have not tested with SR1)
• the standard 'flat" interface
• the possibility to change axis (I use Y as the vertical axis)
• unlimited undo (Complete is limited to 3 undos)

Last difference, it was available from the start!

FYI, the page detailing the differences between Infinite and complete no longer seems to be online:
But it is in Google's cache.
Just type: cache:http://www.e-onsoftware.com/products/vue/vue_7_complete/compare.php in Google search box.

I had a slightly more complicated approach.

1996: started 3d with Bryce 2.
Tried Vue 1.2. Found that it had copied a number of things from Bryce. Did not like the interface. Stayed with Bryce.

1999 Metacreations abandoned Bryce. I was still using version 4 at the time.
Downloaded a trial version of Vue 3. It crashed several times during my tests and I did not like its default render quality. Uninstalled it.

2001: I was using Bryce less and less and saw the whole user community melt away or switch to more promising apps.
I myself switched my interests towards photography

2006: found that DAZ had purchased Bryce and that version 6 at last had a significant improvement: IBL. Bought it for $6 and started to play with it. 
Sent a few emails to former contacts about Bryce 6 and one of them (Luc Bianco) replied that Vue was the fast moving app at the time. Saw a video at Youtube that detailed the functions of Vue 6 Infinite.
Installed a demo of Vue 6 Pro Studio and played with the functions Bryce has been deprived from for so many years: realistic atmosphere model, ecosystems, material management panel. I then purchased Infinite and now use it for most of my images. 

From what is said above, it seems that:

• many of us are from the former Bryce user base. It is striking to see how largeand faithful it was and how Corel and DAZ let it dwindle entirely. Most of the Bryce users of 1998 no longer use it, but many of them have not switched to Vue.
• some of us came to Vue after using a demo.

It may be a tad late, but this discussion could prove interesting for the E-On marketing stuff in these times of intense Vue 7 promotion.

I have added them on my website in the 3d textures section.

I have made two separate textures so that they may be mixed to avoid the repetitive patterns you generally get when using bitmaps. I have also included bump maps (hence the file size).

Hope this helps.

I have two different sets of bitmap textures that I have made and never used so far.
What would you need? Pine needles with scarce green grass or pine needles with yellow grass?

These textures are 2000*2000, tileable and based on photos.