I and my associate have just performed a rendering test of Bryce 4 and Bryce 5 using the scene shown. All settings were kept identical and both renderings had an output size of 540 x 360 pixels with normal anti-aliasing. We used a 500 Mhz AMD K6-2 pc under windows 98. The render times were: 14 minutes 56 seconds in Bryce 4.1, 17 minutes 28 seconds in Bryce 5.01.

conclusion: I have never before seen a newer version of a graphics program actually get slower. I also felt much sadness.

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