Anthony Appleyard opened this issue on Feb 17, 2004 · 77 posts
soulhuntre posted Thu, 19 February 2004 at 5:15 PM
Play a rousing game of "How long until it crashes". Open P5, load some figures, start posing, and see how long it takes until it crashes. Prizes will be awarded to people who can keep it running longed than the currect record of 10 minutes."
What's my prize? My record so far is about 6 days. That's rendering and posing and scene creation about 11 hours a day for all six days. Then again since it didn't actually crash (I exited it cause I was done) I suppose that doesn't count.
"Cry about the fact that you paid $350 for piece of software that you won't use because it's so buggy and that the company won't take back even though it probably violates the implied warranty of being a usable product."
It's too bad the wont take it back since your system seems to be incapable of running it well. It is always unfortunate when someone can't get use out of something they paid for. But it sure isn't CL's fault that your system won't stay stable with this tool.
Poser 5 is stable for a lot of people. Would it be better if it was stable for everyone? Sure. But since it is as stable as Max and Maya I am fairly satisfied for the price.
You're upset? Fine. You want to be vocal about it? Go for it. But realize that this particular horse is losing steam as more and more people start to get over their initial upset and realize P5 is a capable, stable upgrade with some good features.
"I'll re-install my Poser 5 when Curious Labs brings up a downloadable upgrade that can run at least as many characters and props on stage as Poser 4 can, including under Windows 98."
There is simply no reason or method for companies to continue to try and add features and still support obsolete systems that are more than 5 years out of date.
I know that the speed of evolution in the computer field is confusing to some, but its a fact of life... and I don't want ANY company, CL included, to continually have to hold back their software to keep those who won't or can't upgrade happy.
Just like I stopped designing websites that worked in IE 1, or Netscape 3, or on 640x400 screens. The world moves on.
"I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's not the utter crap many purport it to be.""
Complaining about new software versions is a common Internet pastime. You see it in EVERY product. Each new version of Maya and Max there are a host of people complaining that features don't work, that stability sucks, that it is slow or bloated and refusing to upgrade.
It will never end, and there is no way to avoid it. Change is not something everyone enjoys... and when you couple that with the trend of people billeting what they want to believe about the "next version" there will always be upset and disappointment. This sort of complaint is not unique to Poser, or Curious Labs. Every upgrade of every tool ever released faces similar complaining.
Before SR3 there may have been some validity? Now? None really.
"it is time the Poser software source form was made public like the Gnu software is, so that many people can look at it in spare time and find and correct bugs and inefficiencies etc in it."
Because the answer to making a complex program better is to kill the company that develops it, let a billion programmers of varying skills and talents make changes to it that no one will really review and then expect us all to put the result on our machines? no thanks.
Only a very, very few programs that have been open sourced benefited from the process - and almost all of those had massive corporate backing and professional, full time development staffs. Open source Poser and it dies instantly as a tool with any future.
"Poser is not compatible with the closed-source, security-flawed Windows OS"
Really? I guess the fact that my Windows (and those of my clients) are secure, stable and fast and that the machines I run Poser on run it perfectly is an illusion :)
OS wars - the other type of internet zealotry :)
"I don't understand why people keep making excuses for poorly-written software."
Because in this case P5 is no more or less buggy than any other large, complex tool. Bugs of some degree are inevitable in large software - not package is immune to them no matter how much it costs. There is not a single P5 bug that causes me a moments problem during my work with it - not one.
However Poser 5 IS a tool that does tax a computer as much as Max does (for example) and while that may not be a good thing, it isn't a bug. A lot of people complain and moan about Max being buggy too - and most of the time it is old or out-dated hardware or software.
Poser 5 represents hundreds of thousands of lines of code that interacts with literally millions of lines of code from many other vendors (video drivers, operating system files, third part data files and so on). That there are, in all that interaction among all that code by all those people some complex and somewhat inconsistent interaction is inevitable.
And it always will be in complex systems.
Computers are deterministic and lend themselves absolutely to analysis by logic. However the number of factors involved in the proper functioning of large software systems is a variable count measured in the millions at some levels of detail.
"Why is it that only P5 requires a stripped machine?"
It doesn't. While it is a common diagnostic or suggestion for people to go through the normal "chicken dance" of antivirus and declutter ting and so on, the reality is that Poser 5 runs just fine on many machines with no special preparation at all.
I run Poser 5 alongside and at the same time as Max, Photoshop, Maya, Outlook, Dreamweaver and Visual Studio constantly. I have NEVER had to defrag, de-crud or in any other way strip down or alter my machine for any of those programs, P5 included.
"Would it be fair to say that most of the power-users of P5 still bounce back and forth between it and older versions?"
No. Of those I know who are Poser "power users" that I know enough about to know the work habits stay in Poser 5 all the time. A vendor may go back to Poser 4 to check their products compatibility, but that is becoming less and less common and will fade away in the future as P4 eventually, finally, goes the way of the dodo.
"I can load an "all head morphs" injection pose very quickly in P4; the same operation in P5 goes on for minutes."
Have you copied the !DAZ folder to the P5 runtime? This is a known flaw with the Daz injection method used in V3 and M3. It's one of the problems with Daz deciding not to officially support P5.
A "All morphs injection" takes just under 30 seconds on my machine or less depending on what I am running other than P5.