Best bass sims and/or plugins

Hey all,

What bass VSTs or sims do you all use? My music ranges from indie rock to ~goth to some punk/heavy stuff. Let's say in range of Jeff Buckley, Smiths, Suede, some old school punk.

Also stuff like Depeche Mode, New Order, etc but I use synths on that.

But for songs where I want a live electric bass sound, what programs have realistic MIDI basses that sound like a real bass? I have some stock patches on the synths that come with Cubase and they're, not surprisingly, mediocre.

Also, for those of you who specifcally produce music meant to sound like a live band (whether that's rock, funk, metal, etc) rather than synthy or electronic sounds, do you find you can get the bass dialed in to sound real, even when played with a keyboard?

I always find they sound like they're played on keys rather than a bass--there are no string squinches, finger noises, accidental little slides into certain notes, etc. They sound too square, too 'perfect.'

I do actually own a bass and I can play, but I can never really seem to get great tone. My technique isn't great and it just never ends up sounding strong in the mix.

So what options might I want to look at?

EDIT/UPDATE - for my own reference and others looking at bass options.

Looks like best choices are:

--MODO Bass (IK Multimedia) - $50 (on sale at time of posting)

--Trilian (Spectrasonics) - $280 (great reputation, lots of synth basses too, but 32GB and CPU heavy)

--Shreddage 3 (Impact Soundworks) - Free w/further basses for purchase

--EZBass (Toontrack) - $179 (only 2 basses, but has audio replace feature--ie replace live bass takes w/sample tones)