I've seen this a couple of days ago, also contemplated to start a topic about it here, glad you did it
I do not intend to start a TG2 vs Vue war, but these 3 "winners" probably made it too hard for me to resist, damn! Here's why IMHO:
The winner: well, it's a render of a bunch of models. Put the same scene in TG2 and you'll have a near exact similar result, though I believe Vue is ahead of TG2 when it comes to freedom of object placement etc. I call it a render of a bunch of models, because the models are probably NOT made in Vue at all. So what is it showing about Vue. Very little if you'd ask me.
1st runner up: I admit that the cirrus look very good. But I can't help thinking that it is made b&w to mask the many flaws in the terrain, texturing and clouds (especially the grain).
I bet this render looks sucky in full color.
2nd runner up: it allways seems easier with Vue to get nice glow in clouds, but luckily the cloud-fractals of Vue are far behind of TG2 ('s "only" 4 fractal-flavours)
The terrain is barely visible and as far as I can see nothing special. The real laugh for me on this one is the seemingly "end of terrain" like we used to see in the TG0.9x days when you had camera placed at too high altitude and could see your heightfield float into infinite empty-ness
Dom, I agree Between Land and Sea does look better, but what annoys me is that the clouds obstruct too much of the otherwise very nice POV. And the 3 references shouldn't be necessary. A landscape image should explain its scales by itself, so not by putting a human, an airplane and a boat somewhere to show the vast scales.
Clearly my opinion of course, because I don't like landscapes which are "polluted" with man-made objects. With the exception of some well-crafted/executed works of some of course
Croatian Dream is really one of the best there. It might not be the environment the judges were looking for, but it clearly shows that Vue can do other things besides making natural landscapes. I bet that making the same image in TG2 is a painstakingly difficult and utterly time-consuming effort. Vue is way more versatile when it comes to object placement and speed of work.
The Knights of Fire looks pretty good. Too much photo-texturing I'd say, but in certain parts it works extremely well. I'd ve broken it up a bit more, because it destroys the depth of the image. Or else I'd have tried another solution by slightly altering the POV to emphasize the different stages in the image (fore- mid- and background).
Looking at the winners and other finalists it seems the judges probably had something else in mind than we would expect by simply looking at the contest title.
For me 2 of the 3 winners are among the worst submissions.
Dom, can you explain why you think Vue clouds are better now?
Have you seen Clash of the Titans, by accident?
All in all I think there are only a handful of Vue artists which can make top landscapes with Vue.
There are a couple more than the 3 I will mention below:
http://kouki1.deviantart.com/gallery/#i-3D-LANDSCAPES (mostly well-balanced images which have not, like many Vue-works, each pixel/area of the image stuffed with you name what)
http://jonx0r.deviantart.com/gallery/#3d-Renders (keep an eye on this guy)
http://nukeation.deviantart.com/gallery/(self-explanatory for me)
Cheers,
Martin