There are some nice vector displacement capabilities introduced in 2012 and there were a handful of small modeling enhancements from 2010 and up. However, as Dave points out the majority of development has been poured into animation and dynamics for the last 3 releases.

Also, be advised that 2012 has a very small subset of hardware that it seems to like. My system is getting old, especially my graphics card. This system ran 2009 just fine, but has some very frustrating and annoying problems running 2012.

As soon as I can go grab another $4k from the money tree in my back yard I'll be putting together a new system and hopefully many of the issues I am experiencing will diminish.