I ask this because the hair feature doesn't see to render well in long lengths but the hair props do. It occurred to me that one might get the same dynamic effect of the hair room with a hair prop turned to cloth, has anyone tried this and what do they thing of the idea

That same idea ocurred to me when someone over at CG Talk showed a hair animation using Cinema 4D's Clothilde. In this case though, the hair was more like Poser 5 Hair (spline based). Would be interesting to see if it works and what the results are.

I have tried working with Quarkers Grace Lion Hair (I love that hair!) I emailed PhilC about it and he told me to turn it into a prop first. I did and tried it but all of the pieces flew off. It has to be all one piece for it to work and I don't know anything about modeling to be able to weld all those pieces to the base model. I have been learning wings3d so that I can fix it. I haven't tried it yet with a more simple hair model.

It has to all be one piece, and if you want self-collisions none of the polygons can intersect. The cloth seems to be a bit too "flat" for hair too. There's no springiness in cloth dynamics.