Let's see if I can do this without discussing the "poster" at all :)

D|S is a cute tool. And its a nice alpha. The 3Delight renderer is not bad for a middle of the road to low end rendering engine like Firefly in Poser 5. In fact, neither 3Delight or Firefly really have any significant advantages over the other... and both are much better than the P4 default renderer.

Now, obviously a good D|S render will be "as good as" a bad Max renderer and so on, so the question is in some forms meaningless... but in terms of flat out technical ability - the current Max and Lightwave render engines are better than 3Delight and Firefly. Live with that. And we don't even need to discuss the latest versions of Maya and Max that run Mental Ray.

What confuses me is why someone who is, by their own admission, specializing in non realistic renders to use as a baseline for extensive post processing would try and simultaneously claim that their renders are an example of render engine capabilities.

Yes, you could take Max and turn off all the shadows, use non photo real textures, ignore most of the more complex mapping options, use a fairly flat lighting set up and so on and wind up with images that look like this. You could also do it in Bryce, POV ray, C4D and just about anything else that can sling pixels. It's cute, and I am glad it's making someone money. Hell, it's even "art" ... but what it >ISN'T< is a powerful display of a rendering engine or the potential of a tool.

Of course you can make money with this stuff, the market is a cool place. I know artists who make money drawing what are essentially stick figures. It's a funny world out there... but it doesn't mean D|S is breaking new ground render wise.

Renders from D|S have been taken to 2-3 other forums and shown off as being "as good as" 3Ds Max or Lightwave renders... and they were clearly not as good as most of what can be done in those programs.

I like the potential in D|S. I like Poser as a market. I even make money with it. But before you go running around showing flat, simply lit scenes with fairly low res textures and trying to trumpet how amazing it is in other forums... you might really want to think about how badly it will get spanked.

BTW - if we are talking about impressing non proto real renders, you might like this one and certainly this one.