Hello fellow members,

I upgraded from Poser 5 (with SR4) to Poser 6 (with SR2) several months ago.

However, my experiences tell me that Poser 6 crashes/freezes more often than Poser 5 when rendering older third party products released prior to the P6's release.
As my computer has limited space, I'm considering going back to Poser 5; but, I  do prefer some of the features that P6 supports, like the James, Miki characters and the FaceRoom that works on James' face.

Before I make the switch-back from P6 to P5, I'd like to know if other people also have the same experiences, or if it's just me.

Poser 5 (with SR4) or Poser 6 (with SR2), which version is more stable in your experiences?

Your opinion will be helpful and appreciated.

3DVim

.

Poser 6 is running more stable for me. But I did not have many problems with P5 SR4 either.

If a P6 render quits on me, it is because of render settings and extensive use of all the nice features

like AO and IBL.

After SR2 came out I've found P6 to be much more stable and efficient.

I'd stick with P6!

That said, a new problem has arisen that I think is poser specific because I have done 4 virus scans with different scanners which have not found any viruses.

It's asking for a windows disk when I try to load some props that used to load OK so I don't know what's happening. I've contacted CL in case they know about it.

I think the libraries are buggier in P6. Binary Morphs were unstable at first. P6 lets you cancel a render! Hard to let that go along with the improved lights.

P6 is a lot more stable for me.  Especially the cloth room and hair room.
Renders seem a lot more reliable too.

got to say that P6+upgrades SR1+SR2 is much more stable from my point of view - and as a previous poster observed, the cancel render option is very handy to have.

I'll ditto the judgment.  6 is far more solid.

Also, Netherworks has a set of Legacy Converter scripts, which could

help your older items to work in P6.

See at:  netherforums.com

Count with those who have found P6 with SR2 to be quite stable. Its choked on a couple of very large renders (4000 x 4000) that used raytraced shadow blurs, but unlike previous versions, I'm not getting any file corruption, crashes, or anything nasty. Yay!

3DVim I feel your pain. Your experiences have value. I think a lot of people fear someone experiencing more P6 troubles than had with P5. Although P6 ServicePack2(SR2) fixed some issues I personaly have found it still nessesary(for me) to keep both P5 & P6 on my system.

One thing I've done for my characters is to resave a copy of my Miki with the P6 feature - "Use external binary morph targets" turned off under general preferences. Make sure you use a different name like "Miki2" when doing that. That makes P6 combine the morphs into the character so even P5 can read it. I think this can be done with Jessi and James as well.

I'm sure you've probably checked most this stuff but just in case it might be helpful...  It's a check list of some things I have found can help with making P6 more stable if you feel up to trying one more time.

 a) scan & defrag the hard drive. (I've read that people have had problems when the drive is fragmented.)

 b) make sure your video drivers are current. (People had trouble with older drivers.)

 c) try checking SreeD preview and not using the OpenGL. (Under Display/preview)

 d) Turn the video hardware acceleration down one or two notches. It doesn't have to be crashing to need to do this(This often helps with computers that are fussy to.)
 * see link --->       http://www.e-frontier.com/article/view/1392/1/598/
 
 e) some people have reported that Norton AntiVirus and Poser don't like each other some times but that said I never tell anyone to run without a antivirus.

 f) if this is nothing new to you and never worked then what the heck. I use my P5 still to. At least we can make Miki and others P5 compatable. O_o  :D

If this is redundent please forgive me. I've listed these things only in case there might be something you could have over looked . You never know . :D

Good luck and best wishes.

Thank y'all for the reply, and thank you very much mylemonblue, for the extensive advices -- they're all helpful to me.

My laptop (bought in 2004) doesn't support USB 2.0 even though the manufacturer said otherwise, and most of the external hard-drives (mostly with USB 2.0) in the market don't work with my laptop. 

I'm planning to buy a desktop PC in the near future with big space, and an external HD to accommondate both P5 and P6.  But for now, I think I'll just stick with P6 while using all the tips you gave.

Thanks again!

BEST!

For me Poser6+SR2 is as stable as Poser5+SR4. But the first has better work with libraries and Firefly then the second one