that's what i get when i run crowd.c(bone animated character models) sample with 60k actors on 9600GT, note that this scene has no LOD setup and no instancing. If instancing is going to only give me 10 more fps it's not really useful. Also no one would need this much animated actor on screen at the same time. For vegetation, as others also stated, you would not want same tree model all over the forest. for grass and clutter sprite instancing is supported. Say if you are going to use 20 of each tree model in the scene and only 3 of same tree will be visible on screen, instancing would not make too mush difference on performance.