Does anyone know if curiouslabs are going to port over to a 64 bit version of poser in time for Microsofts newest 64 bit operating system "whistler" and intels new 64it itanium chip shipping in 2nd quarter of 2001?

I suspect it depends on the sales of Whistler and the Itanium, but I'd bet against a 64bit version being out any time in the near future... I suspect P5 will come out for 32 bit machines about the same time Whistler and the Itanium are released, and a 64 bit Poser will be about six months to a year later, if it comes out at all. I don't KNOW, but this is what I'd suspect. I'd almost be willing to bet on it...

Well, The itanium and Whistler combo are still supposed to support all 32 bit applications just as well as previous windows versions. Whether or not they will work, or will work with a performans/stability hit is still to be seen. I doubt there will be a 64 bit poser out unless the itanium really takes off, which also remains to be seen.

I just popped in to point out that Microsoft has offered me NOTHING for the use of my name!

I would be happy to see ANY new Poser version. I'm am starting to think Curious Labs is A person that is doing coding after they get home from their day job!

rwilliams, We'd all like to see more features in a new version of Poser. But it seems to me that Curious Labs is doing a lot of the non-technical business things that are necessary to ensure the future of Poser. For example, the latest catalog of mail-order house MicroWarehouse (and MacWarehouse, too) now lists the Curious Labs branded software for Poser 4 at $229. That means that the distribution channels are being refilled. It was wopnderful of Zygote to help in the meantime, but I think it is great news that Poser is getting back on the shelves of more retailers. It will help the whole community. - JimW

While we're on the wish list, I sure hope Poser 5 also takes advantage of the new multi-processor Macs that are now on the market. - JimW

I just bought a G4 dual processor Mac especially for 3D purposes, and that's my hope as well! I'm having a few monor problems which I trace to Poser's inability to deal with dual processors.

I don't think that Poser is running up against any 32 bit limits that going to 64bits would help (unlike my own work in acoustics). So "support" of 64 bit Itanium or Sledgehammer really is just a matter of compiler optimizations, and is a job for the compiler writers. Since it's ported Mac code anyway, don't count on too much optimization. As far as the dual processor stuff, you have no idea how difficult taking advantage of SMP is. It requires a program which is written specifically to be able to break a task up into multiple, parallel tasks, and shepherd the results of this splitting. And considering how different Mac and Windows do this, you would have to do double the work. At best, all it would do is speed Poser's rendering a bit. Good OpenGL support would help a lot more, with the actual posing. And Whistler's "problems dealing with dual processors" will probably clear up when Apple actually starts pushing the (now 12 years late) Os-X.

That's what I'm hoping...though the word is that OS-X presents a few problems of its own! Um...that was MINOR problems I'm having. Had a monor spelling error there.