ok after getting inspired by biebel et al’s renders I just started with vfsu and am following the PDF manual and using manual scenes.
I am not getting the soft shadows (as shown in the manual on page 11) when I switch off the GI!! The only difference I see is the blue hue/tinge disappears!
any help?
please see attached screen shots…
Re: Soft shadows?!
ok I found my answer in another thread below (by richroze)
The thing about changing ‘sky’ to ‘none’ under Environment>GI was not mentioned in the manual!!! (at least not on page 11… :P)
Re: lrsuser’s thread of queries
moving on…
I just tried a quick render with default settings on a one of my projects
Realized that vray is not rendering what I see on screen!!!
Seems the camera is pulled away and FOV is changed!!
What settings/properties do i need to fiddle with?
Re: lrsuser’s thread of queries
i suppose thats becoz u have the OVERRIDE VIEWPORT tab checked ON in ur output settings.. try turning it off! 
oh and make sure that in ur camera settings the OVERRIDE FOCAL LENGTH is also switched to off…
Re: lrsuser’s thread of queries
The settings for the physical sun/sky are later in the book (probably something like page 80 or something…check the toc). The issue stems from 3/4 of the book being written before we had the current defaults, so it doesn’t really work from the same base point as if you just opened the file. I’ve included the old defaults, so if you want to follow the book better, you can just load those up and things should work more like they do in the book.
As for the view thing, thats most likely the FOV which is being overridden. Go to v-ray options> camera and it should be in there somewhere. If its not that and your using the physical camera, its possible that you increased the film size, which throws off the standard focal length relationships…but the later is rather unlikely.
Re: lrsuser’s thread of queries
dhanywaad jj!!.. 
Re: lrsuser’s thread of queries
oh! haha! mention not Irsuser!