Personally, I don't expect to see a new version of Poser until at least August or September of next year (if then), so you might as well purchase P5 now and start learning the ropes. Yes, Poser 5 can do dynamic clothing. It doesn't include any tools for modeling your own, but once you have a clothing mesh within Poser itself, you can configure all the cloth's properties to make it act like anything from silk to burlap during the simulation. Poser can import a number of mesh formats, including Wavefront OBJ, 3DS, and LWO, and there's a wide range of modeling programs available should you wish to create your own custom clothing, with prices ranging from freeware to mortgage-the-house. Wings 3D, trueSpace, and 3DS Max seem to be popular choices around here. Poser's Firefly rendering engine and material room are capable of creating photorealistic results, with sufficient tinkering. In Poser, subsurface scatter is called translucence, and I believe the Skin shader has translucence built-in. You also have the option of rendering your Poser scenes in other applications, like DAZ|Studio or Vue.