Excellent work indeed. My max render size is 1600 px. Quite a while ago I rendered the same image in different sizes and sent them to a photo lab to make A4 (roughly Legal) sized images. I also printed them to this size and found that there is no difference if I increased the size. Only when I do spherical panoramas, I render the 6 cube faces as 2560 px to assemble to a 8192 x 4096 px panorama.

32-bit applications, like Bryce, can officially only manage 2 GB of memory. However, it can actually manage 4 GB, 2 of them are reserved for the operating system (Windows). There is a means to get some of those reserved 2 GB back for the running application. Most 32-bit programs have a flag that can be set to take some of those reserved 2 GB for them, and Bryce can be made Large Address Aware (LAA). There is a free program that can be downloaded and just unpacked into any folder on your disk (around 40 KB - kilo, not mega or giga). When Bryce is set to LAA, it can use around 3.2 to 3.5 GB of memory, provided your machine has at least 4 GB of memory. I use LAA not only for all my installed Bryce (4 to 7.1) but other programs, too on my Win 7 and Win 10 computers.
You may watch this video (link below), in which I explain how to get the tool and use it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDZmETVO15c

I do not argue with your insights, gabrierikdesign and I fully agree that Daz 3D is completely ignorant of Bryce, it does not even accept new assets (my second last was declined within 35 seconds (!) and the last one I tried took less than 2 minutes to be declined). Interestingly enough, I have 59 sets for Bryce in the Daz store and they still sell enough for Daz 3D to keep me as a PA.

Nevertheless, I still run Bryce 4, 5, 5.5, 6.0, 6.1, 6.3, 7.0 and 7.1 on a Windows 2000, an XP, 2 Win 7 and 2 Win 10 and even use Network Rendering (though not very often).

Bryce has its limitations, no doubt, but it is versatile. You can do abstracts, landscapes, space scenes or under water scenes, objects, vegetation, ... I find it difficult to use it successfully for characters, particularly close-up faces. Renders can take long, even on my i9 16 core CPU Win 10. Raytracing always takes more time than pathtracing because it makes less shortcuts.

The memory limitation of 2 GB (or about 3.5 GB with LAA) is a severe limitation. Compressing a final scene to save on disk is probably the worst "advantage" that was introduced with Bryce 6 because it is done in memory and thus limits it even more.

I can not comment on animation. I had tried it a long time ago and realised that I am a complete nut doing movies.

The last update to Bryce was made in 2011, and this is - as far as computer programs are concerned - an eternity. Looking on the bright side: no new bugs were introduced and meanwhile I know a lot of them and found ways around them.

So for me, Bryce is not dead.

Very sad news. I know her from the Daz Bryce forums and there was a time when we had some personal email exchange. I will miss her ...

Thanks AgentSmith for the Voronies. I grabbed them and may play around with them once I've got some time. And yes, I keep Bryceing ...

How to find out which version of Bryce is running? Hold down the control key when clicking on Help > About Bryce. On the Mac it is probably the option key.

I'm still using Bryce daily. There's always something new to discover. Though there are features missing I'd like to have, Bryce still has a lot of features - not always obvious - that more "modern" programs still do not have. And we have two different render engines included. The bright side of not having experienced upgrades is that no new bugs were introduced ;)

Depends on what sort of 3D you want. Anaglyphs and renders to be viewed cross-eyed or parallel-eyed can be rendered in Bryce in one go. Just put an appropriate lens in front of it. If you prefer to spend a bit of money over experimenting, there's Bryce 7 Pro True 3D Rendering (https://www.daz3d.com/bryce-7-pro-true-3d-rendering). I apologise for the self-advertisement. I've been a great fan of true 3D for a very long time, have a 3D photo camera, photographed even spherical HDRI anaglyph panoramas and did anaglyphs by rendering two images. That's why we came up with a lens that does it all in one go.

Strange. Bryce has its own OBJ import and export tools, they are in the folder Plugins (in the Bryce main folder) and are named OBJImport.bro and OBJExport.brb.

I am a purist, no post work. This may sound silly because the result counts, not the means how it was accomplished. However, being a purist makes me work harder to see what Bryce can do. I'm amazed, no astonished, what can be done with Bryce. I still think I am the limit, not Bryce.

Interesting thread. Large HDRIs use a lot of memory and tone-mapping even more. How much I measured and compiled into a 3 page PDF if you're interested. https://horo.ch/docs/mine/pdf/HDRI-MemUse.pdf.

Well, there is no Bryce 7.5, it stopped at 7.1. With Bryce 6.0 file compression was introduced - a bad move because compressing/decompressing is done in memory. Memory limit is still 2 GB (though that can be extended if there's enough memory in the system) but it can use up to 8 CPU cores to render, which speeds up things considerably. I still have all versions from 4 up installed but use the older versions seldom, 7.1 is very much improved.

Apart from the missing Mac support, Bryce is very much alive. Even though it's now four years without upgrade or advancement, I still discover undocumented pearls in this program. There are several capable 3D programs available, Bryce is the most versatile one. It's not just a great landscaper, there's almost no genre of art you can't do with it. Bryce will be dead the moment nobody uses it anymore.

Thanks go to Karl for making me aware of this forum thread. Supplying renders at 1600 by 1200 pixels is no problem. For the interview with 3D Art Direct I rendered 4000 px wide on request.

The reservations brought up so far are valid issues. A printed book with color pictures is expensive to produce. A book needs a publisher and this means convincing a potential one. This can be time consuming and frustrating (went through that in the 1990is). However, if we get there, that's the best option.

The distribution of the royalties is an issue as well. 8 years ago I contributed to a book on HDR photography and I was happy to get a free copy of the book. I didn't ask for more. It depends what each individual contributing expects as his/her return. This has to be established, no matter whether the final work will be available as hard or soft product.

I wouldn't bother about the cover at this stage but rather what goes into the book. Who's doing the main writing? Will there be tutorials? What is the main aim of the book?

Whether limiting Bryce artwork featured to 100% Bryce or are objects brought in from other software welcome should also be established early on. 100% Bryce also means 0% post in any graphics application. Though I'm a Bryce purist (silly attitude because the result counts, not the means how it was achieved), I do use props and objects I bring into scenes now and then.

And yes, Karl, your insects are amazingly amazing.

Thank you for your reply, much appreciated. So LAA is a bit of a hit-and-miss game then. Anyway, good to know what to test if crashes occur. Put on the label "Use at your own risk."