Although i´m on LW 7.5 now, i still have around my old Inspire, which i boot everynow and then.
Inspire was an 85% of full LW 5.6.
That absent 15% had the high-end functionality present in LW, which included HYpervoxels, Steamer, Natural Shaders, advanced IK, numeric input in Modeler, posibility to display images in Modeler viewports, and had only 4 layers available in Modeler (LW had 10 layers), as well as only 2 slots for plugins in Layout.
The render engine was the same present in Lightwave, but for animated scenes the resolution was limited to 640x480 (which was closer to NTSC than it was to PAL rez, you lucky guys). For still image rendering there was no limitation (well, the same rez available for LW)
It´s a pretty amazing piece of software, for beginners and for everyone wanting to model and animate in a more "primitive" way, which is something that gives you experience.
It supports most of the old LW 5.x plugins, and there were, as someone already said, plugins to add those numeric inputs in Modeler (though to be honest, i hardly ever used them).
It was a pitty NT discontinued it. The only thing i missed was those images in modeler viewports, as it was advertised this feature was available, and it wasn´t, which rendered the soft almost useles to graphic designers (it was advertised as a great tool for them). No logo tracing capabilities.....
JC