Having just purchased Poser 5 (yes, again - they don't make P4/PPP for Mac OSX, I gots no OS9 in my Cube, and I traded my Win32 version of P5 in a year ago.) By the by, the OSX version actually works w/o crashing every ten minutes like the Win32 version did. Now if only hair dynamics would work, I would be pleasantly surprised. Anyrate, having seen good ol' Content Paradise mentioned in that gargantuan thread below, I decided to go looking, and it brings a couple questions to mind: Does anyone actually use the thing? Seriously. I'm asking here because asking R'osity or CL admins directly would get me a wall of words that basically boil down to "we can't/won't tell you that" or somesuch. That's actually cool with me, because business is business (NDA's and all), and if I were told anything otherwise I would immediately suspect the veracity of the answer (sorry, but I'm a cynical old bastard who doubts any and all words originating from just this side of Heaven... that's just the way I was built.) I noticed that it still works (it launches Safari and looks to be a middleman sort of thing... requires a seperate login and such), but I noticed that (as a rough count) at least 90% of the stuff is R'osity MP stuff, and there seems to be no difference between buying it in the proggie and buying it here (aside from the IIRC promised auto-install routine... wonder how you make backups of that?) Also, I noticed that it doesn't get updated all that often... fairly recent, but not as recent as it would if I went straight to the site that sold it (which BTW is listed.) I believe that's because of business again, sort of a built-in lag to give the originating store a reason to draw folks in. This is why I asked (besides being semi-bored on a Sunday evening, that is.) It's an offhand question or three yes, but honestly I'm not trying to poke any sleeping dragons - I just want to know if anyone actually uses it, and if so, do you feel it worth using? Since I prefer to just go straight to the website and get it myself, this is more rhetorical than anything else... but it does make me curious to see how others view it (no pun intended, eh?) /P

That actually works?

Looks like it - but I haven't signed up for an account there, so I couldn't tell you if the whole thing works or not. The pages look to be semi-current, though. /P

It works. :) Clint

Yep. It works. It'll show you everything the 'sity has. Of course, no one else's stock, since no one else has ever connected to it. So if you want rDNA (coming soon for over a year), or Bbay (ditto), or TurboSquid (ditto, and you've got THAT much money to spend?) or PoserPros (not listed), or anyplace else, you'll still have to visit their sites. Really, why bother using it? If the 'sity is the only place they have working with it, then come to the 'sity and use a better search engine and interface to find what you want. You can also get the product promo's from the Showcase forum, and do a search in the galleries for examples of the product in use. All it does is add overhead to the program, and create a larger footprint to in the .exe.

the people that would use it are people that probably don't frequent this site, or others for that matter and only use Poser occasionally. So asking in here probably won't get many "yes" responses

Nope, don't use it. I don't feel comfortable to let a programm have access to the Internet that it actually does not need. So I go here directly if I want to buy. I think it was more meant for those who are new to Poser and don't know where they can buy additional stuff and how to install it correctly since the proggie is supposed to do it all for you. Not my thing, I usually decide where something goes when I extract it into my runtimes.

pop over to poserpros,I've posted something on how to get rid of Content Parasite for good :) I won't post it here as it's probably against TOS.

I thought it was a tremendously bad idea when I first heard of it. Allowing auto install of anything on any program is a Bad Thing. Just call me paranoid .... but I don't even auto update my virus Dats. And if all it has is rosity stuff ... well thats just funny :) Now a link library and site update checker would be far more useful. Say I have over 600 3d sites bookmarked (which I do) If I could load those in, have it build a searchable index, and then scan for page updates and alert me? that would extremely cool. Or just clone LittleDragon and include a free copy with each version of Poser heh heh Lyrra

I think that we need to remember that not EVERY Poser user on the planet knows Renderosity :o) I've had at least one sale thru Content Paradise (it's been a long time since I checked) and eventhough that's not much, it's better than nothing :o) If you want to buy something from Content Paradise, do you then have to be a Renderosity member? I'm not sure about that, but since the purchase is in effect handled by Rostiy, I would think so.

Ms. Trek, the answer is prolly no... I tried logging into it via my R'osity account info, and it was rejected, so I suspect you'll have to create a new account through the CL interface instead. /P

Thanks for testing it for me Peng :o) Still it's in general utterly useless. And ugly too. And you only have ONE promo picture... But again.. I have had one sale thru that... so.. It sorta works... It was ages ago though...

I think it might have been a good idea if Curious Labs had followed through and supported it with other access points and made it more attractive for people to use. As it is, there is no incentive for people to want to use it once they find their own way to the Poser communities on the Internet. Not all ideas that seem good at the time seem equally good in retrospect. I am sure if they had the ability to time travel, Curious Labs would do things differently. But, then, so would I.

Re #8. Worth doing!

I have to admit - I tried the XML edit to ditch the Content Paradise room, and the proggie loaded about 20% faster than it did before (renders are still slower than P 4, though...) Just in case folks don't know it, c1rcle's hack works on Mac OSX too. /P

... now that it's been confirmed by others. If your Poser 5 was one of those that ran REALLY slowly, way slower than most people's, then there is just a chance that removing Content Para-site MAY get your Poser 5 to perform to the same level as others! See the thread in PoserPros for details. And another interesting discovery - there are at least 2 different versions of the posershell.xml file. Too early to say if one of them is the cause for the slowdown or not. But there shouldn't be 2 entirely different versions of posershell.xml files...

It's possible there's a difference between the Windows & Mac versions, they had a lot longer to work on the Mac version to get it right.