I apologise now for the long post
I would discount VistaPro straight away. I will admit, it gave me many hours of fun on my old Amiga, but it basically does backgrounds, and Terragen does it better. Bryce and Vue (I have version 4 of both) both are very good, both have abilities to import a wide range of formats, and both can export terrains made in them as well in a variety of formats. Generally, I think Bryce has a harder look to it's pictures than Vue, which has a more painterly style. Bryce can be deathly slow, virtue of the fact it is a true ray-tracer, add volumetrics and render times go through the roof. The new Bryce 5 has a networking feature now, so you can distribute rendering through a network if needed. Vue 4 has now got volumetric capabilities, both lights and atmospheres, and is quite speedy too. It has a few effects as well, sutch as glow and lens flares. Both work well with Poser if you have it, Vue importing native Poser scenes (stills only). Both have animation abilities. Vegetation is very good in Vue, not particularly good in Bryce4, although Bryce5 has a tree lab for making some. I think probably the best way to decide is to go somewhere like
www.renderosity.com and check out the galleries. Corel has a Bryce5 demo available for download (fully activated, 30 days, but slower than release version) and e-on software has Vue 3.1 demo available. Also, British mag PC Format has Vue 2 free on the coverdisc (August issue). Hope that may help some.
Vue d'Esprit 4.0
