I think Video Copilot struck a nice balance between the amount of options while still making the suite fairly simple to use. While there is a ton of stuff to play with, the built-in presets that come with the program will quickly let you get to the nitty gritty and let you start designing immediately.
While the design aspects of the suite are vast, I found it somewhat peculiar that no animation presets were included with Optical Flares (the previously mentioned presets concern the design of the flares, not the animation). There are a few helpful animation controls that automate the flares' shimmer and flicker. But it would be cool to see some included preset keyframed animations for quick glints, transitions, and flare ups included in the next run of Optical Flares.
On my PowerPC running After Effects CS3, I found no issues with the performance of Optical Flares. The suite itself worked flawlessly, and I experienced no crashing once my flares were designed. Of course once you get into using multiple lights in complex 3D comps some system slowing is to be expected, but for the most part Optical Flares worked quite smoothly. Additionally, Video Copilot has already developed an update of the suite to work in 64-bit CS5.
