Looking at the renders on the maxwell site, I, and alot of others, concluded that any renderer these days can make a nice looking image with beautiful textures. So I set about to try and do just that. Ill leave it to you to decide if it was accomplished. 
Took the images with my digital camera. DOF done within vray. Some grain added in post.
edit: cracked concrete texture downloaded from web. forgot about that one.
mission accomplished … case closed 
good show
Looks pretty good, maybe the shadows are a bit dark and the dof could bit just a little stronger, It would be interesting to see it done with the spherical camera too
Damn, i thought it was a photo when u mentioned camera.
Great job.
Nice work percy
-dave
thanks for the replies.
Heres a shot showing the displacement. Its subtle but necessary to break up the smooth outlines of stuff.
Looks real Percy. It’s strange though that the crosshatching on the manhole cover looks convex in the textured but it looks concave in the displacement example. Also is that black line between the pavements a stream of water refracting the rear pavement?
--Jon
i agree about the manhole. probably one of the weaker elements of the image. will fiddle with that. the dark strip is a shadow casting from the higher sidewalk to the lower street level. I could work on the sidewalk texture to make it look more like a sidewalk curb.
Ok, I see now. Thought they were on the same level for some reason 
--Jon
completely agree with you. one thing that really struck me from the early discussions about maxwell is that very few pointed out that 90% of the images showed on the maxwel galleries are basically very good textures work. don’t really have to do with the renderer or its capabilities.
Well done
“…thats going straight to the emporium”
very good work
I didnot understand one thing :
did u make displacement map as one map?
no there is 3 separate items. kind of looks like it might be one object with a displacement map though dont it?