Well i had to laugh in shop this morning when i said to 1 of the assistant's i told ya poser 7 would be out within certain time period after 6 avalible.

Now they should sell the program for $140 full price and put an APOLOGY on the web to everyone who bought bug ridden poser 6, just as shoody programing as 5.

Now let us hear from them that this time they have brought in independant programers to help out, and that we have tested the program 24 hours a day.

Beacause apart from fanatic's who will buy, most poser 6 people wont buy as thier not bloody stupid to fall into the poser 5 and 6, bug ridden trap untill people who have bought it can report on forums if it full of bug's, or if it is bug free.

And hav they fixed the scetch room to let it render transparencie's as well as they seem to be quiet on that one as it should be able to do everything.

So cut the price of program and put out a bloody apology to poser 5 and 6 customers about the crap they had to put up with, about thier bug riden 5 and 6.

That is not likely, poser 7 will have a lot of the old bugs plus some new ones.

I'm a software developer, and I have some experience in marketing upgrades. The best clue is to see if the initial advertising says, "totally re-written" or "re-coded" in it somewhere. When a package is re-written from the ground up, the developers shout it as the primary improvement, and marketing people jump on anything the programmers are excited about. If that key phrase doesn't appear in the advertising, the code base is very likely to be the same one, with new code added in.

Another important thing to note is that users typically perceive all program problems in one category, which they call "bugs". We, the programmers, usually have three categories for those same problems: "Actual bugs", which are features that are not working the way intended when we wrote them, "side effects", which are problems caused by a program change in one place changing the way another part works (very common when you have an old code base), and "design flaws", which are code parts that are working the way they were written, but for the user they don't work well or aren't useful.

Poser 6 has very few "actual bugs", and not many "side effects". Most of the bugs have long since been addressed in service releases. However, it is riddled with "design flaws", IMO. Most of the time when I hear people talk about bugs in Poser, it's that last category that I think of.

My expectation is that many of these types of bugs that exist in Poser 6 will continue to exist in Poser7. I don't expect a significantly enhanced user interface (which I think Poser sorely needs), and I don't expect that they will add a lot of the features that seem to be shortfalls (such as additions to the sketch room).

Why do I expect that? Because once a code base reaches a certain level of complexity, it becomes very difficult to add a feature to anything without causing a side effect, many of which won't show up in organized testing. Programmers do most of their own testing or testing of each other's work, and they know how the program works, and they don't try all of the things that an end user will try, and they don't always think of the combinations of needs of the end user. Programmers just think about their application differently from what the end user does, and it's very hard to coordinate the two. Beta programs help a lot, because beta testers are usually much more relaxed about bugs and often give the software a workout that programmers would never do. Unfortunately, by the time a program goes into beta, there's no time to fix "design flaws", because the company needs some revenue to pay the programmers in the first place. Plus, version upgrades almost never go into beta.

None of this is meant to be an apology for e-Frontier and the way they do business, or the quality (or lack thereof) in Poser. I just wanted to give a look at the way things are in the business of software.

I expect to get the upgrade from Poser 6, unless there just aren't enough new features that I will actually use. I use a lot of graphics software, and they all have some kind of a problem or limitation in them, some more than others. Bottom line is, if I let bugs stop me from using software, I'd go back to painting on cave walls.

I wouldn't expect an apology. Not because they're not nice people, but their lawyers will urge them to never do that, in case someone ever sues them for something. Legal matters take a lot of the niceness out of people when they're doing business. Again, that's the way it is. The people who make the software may be the nicest people in the world, and be truly and deeply sorry for problems that their customers experience, but saying it out loud is scary to them, from a business point of view.

My $0.02, heavily adjusted for inflation.

Captain Jack

Poser hasn`t been completely rewritten since version 2 AFAIK.

According to posts of people who do have poser 6, there are quite a few bugs and some of them are major, a lot of these bugs were not in p4 or earlier.

There are quite a few design flaws.

Not being able to copy and paste parameters is a problem I have been suggesting they fix since poser 4, it would help a lot in figure creation and editing.

Captain Jack is absolutely correct - being a developer myself and understanding every word he said.  I do beta-testing and will change design-flaws when possible during testing - but it is difficult if it relies upon a base design feature (something which has an impact far and wide throughout the code).

Now, see, I'm one of those boobs who has already pre-ordered Poser 7.  The thing is, I do this as my development depends upon my knowledge of Poser.  Not having the latest version would be a gap in that knowledge.  Bug-ridden or flawed, I need to 'keep up with the Jones'' here so that my future goal strategies take into account any new features or changes.

Quote - Not being able to copy and paste parameters is a problem I have been suggesting they fix since poser 4, it would help a lot in figure creation and editing.

My personal favorite peeve is not being able to move the camera by dragging in the figure window. I think that that one enhancement would improve the workflow in Poser immensely.

Camera dragging in the document window - and some way to 'frame' the selected figure/prop/camera/light.  It is too easy to get 'lost' in Poser space and there is no way back - not even bread crumbs. :)

Version 5 never worked for me but I have been extremely happy with 6 and I will be one of those bloody stupid people ordering P7 :-)

I'm going to have to agree with  "Design Flaw"  being the primary problem category with Poser 6 (for me at least). If they would only install modern UI facilities I'd buy P7 just for that. It's little things like "multi-select" (say in the material room among other places), like a tree view for the library to speed up putting a scene together. Little piddly things like that which add up to make using the program tedious and sometimes frustrating.

Anyway, that's my $0.02.

When using the main camera, Alt/Click drag, front camera, select the camera and drag. I haven't tried it with other cameras.

I'd just like to see expansion of the "Undo" function.  Once isn't enough

Sheila

So why don't E-Frontier re-write Poser from the ground up (aside from it being a time consuming process)? I would have thought that this would make Poser so much more advanced in one huge step.

Perhaps it's the existing content issue (i.e. will it still be usable?) that is causing it to remain entrenched in that old code (?)

I pre-ordered 6 and got the "memory issue" for my pain, I'm not going to make the same mistake!

6 was largely unusable for months until SR1 came out, I hope 7 will be better but I'm gonna wait even though my heart is telling me to get it, my head's gonna win on this one!!

Quote - So why don't E-Frontier re-write Poser from the ground up (aside from it being a time consuming process)? I would have thought that this would make Poser so much more advanced in one huge step. Perhaps it's the existing content issue (i.e. will it still be usable?) that is causing it to remain entrenched in that old code (?)

Well, time-consuming means expensive, and yes, content is very much an issue. If I were going to re-write Poser from the ground up, the very first thing I'd do is scrap that God-awful CR2 format and replace it with something that doesn't look like it was designed by sixteen retarded monkeys on a weekend bender. No offense meant to alcoholic, retarded monkeys, of course.

Once I did that, I'd have to write a translation program to convert existing content to the new format, or I'd be lynched by the existing community. Which would happen after I got fired for making a product that can't be sold. But, even if I did get the data to somehow convert from it's existing, insane format (did I mention that I don't really like the way the format is designed?) it almost certainly wouldn't render the same way as it did before, and it probably wouldn't animate the same way as it did before. Which would probably hurt sales, too.

The reality of the situation is, if e-Frontier were to invest in making a program that would do all of the things that the users want it to do, and that the content developers want it to do, and that the people who integrate it with other apps want it to do, and all of the people that make add-ons with Python want it to do, they absolutely could do that. They could make it into a CG tool every bit as powerful and sophisticated as, say, Maya or 3D Studio. Everyone who used it would be supremely pleased with it (well, mostly; I've never known of software that everyone liked).

Betcha it'd sell for more than $250 or $300 US, though. And it wouldn't run on anywhere near as many computers. If they decide to sink enough money and time into Poser to re-do it, I'd bet the farm that they'll write themselves into a new market. Somewhere during the project, someone would say, "Hey, let's make this a really high-end application, and we can continue to sell the existing Poser for the same price." Money makes the world go 'round, and if a company spends hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to develop a software app from the ground up, they're gonna wanna make it back, as fast as they can.

That's pretty much why, I'm afraid.

Captain Jack

I think finally this version 7 comes with a MAKE ART buttom

Then perhaps Poser will be as easy as these crappy 3DS, Ligthwave, Maya people usually says :glare:

:woot:

:lol:

I was thinking on the same lines jevens69. If they wrote all the things into the program that everyone wanted that program would no longer be made available to the general hobbyist cost wise. This would really have an impact on e-frontier's customer base. Most people on this forum are everyday hobbyists who are not made of cash or have the resources to burn whenever they feel like it.

Maybe they should make two versions of poser. One version for the home hobbyist and one for the professionals? I don't know but I have to agree that maybe we are looking at same cat only dyed a different color and in a different pet carrier.

As an officer told me once back in the day, "we shall see what we shall see and then go from there."

Quote - I think finally this version 7 comes with a MAKE ART buttom

You don't need software for that... just give a three-year-old a glass of grape juice and let him loose on a clean, white carpet. Voila! Instant art. :laugh: :lol: :laugh:

Captain Jack

So, what you're saing is that if E-F intend to remain within the current (manily hobbyist) market, Poser isn't likely to get much better in terms of things like rigging.

That doesn't sound too optimistic. Doesn't sound too 'Premier 3d Figure Design and Animation Solution' either.

Just thought I'd add my 2 cents worth here. It seems incredible that people would pre-order P7 before actually finding out what the improvements are. Right now all we know is that it has some new content (and even this doesn't look that good compared to V3 or Michael from DAZ). Buying an upgrade because a programme has jumped a version is not sensible and just serves to tell e-frontier that theres a large gullible user-base that will buy any old crap! I was severly disappointed with P6 and will not be making that mistake again. Lets face it, the only advantage of early adoption is to allow one to play with the software sooner. Specialist apps like Poser will only come down in price over time, not up - once the eager beavers have paid full price for it and e-Frontier have made as much as they can from the higher price.

Me, I'm leaving this well alone - at least until e-frontier actually tell me what the darn thing can do!

Quote - Poser hasn`t been completely rewritten since version 2 AFAIK.

"completely" no.

but p6 did have some code rewritten and p7 will have more code rewritten.

That was why I made sure the word completely was there. :m_grin:

This new version seems too soon after the last one to have too many big changes or advancements.

Quote - So, what you're saing is that if E-F intend to remain within the current (manily hobbyist) market, Poser isn't likely to get much better in terms of things like rigging. That doesn't sound too optimistic. Doesn't sound too 'Premier 3d Figure Design and Animation Solution' either.

I think the future of the hobbyist market in all likelihood lies elsewhere, in terms of improvement. My guess (and bear in mind, my crystal ball is a bit cracked) is that Poser will never change a whole lot. The changes that do come will be in the way of wholesale, plugged-in features, like the cloth room and face room were. Any significant change would make it a new product, and it would probably be marketed as such.

There are alternatives, but no pretty ones. The best advantage that Poser has is that it's easier to use for CG development than most over such tools. Take a stab at Blender sometime, for example. You get all the same things you get with Poser (except the Face room, really), plus a whole lot more. There's a thriving on-line community of artists and users. You can do rendering, bone rigging, posing, texturing, and animation. On top of that, you can do model making without needing an external application, it can import and export maybe three times as many formats, it has a better lighting system, and you can interface to multiple rendering systems. You can import a lot of your Poser content, and re-rig it for use in the app. If there's something you want improved, you have unparalleled access to the developers, or you can get the source code and take a stab at fixing it yourself. And, best of all, it's completely, 100% free.

Good luck with the user interface, though. And the documentation. No one, not even it's staunchest supporters, will say it's easy to use.

I doubt there will ever be a really good answer. Poser has this great user base and fan club, in large part because when it came along, it really was the Premiere. There wasn't much of anything else you could by that was similar. They didn't make it easy, but you could make your own add-in content for it. But now, there's lots of choices, the market competition is stiff, and there's more money to be made in making more content than there is in making improvements to the software. Poser's falling behind a bit, because as software gets older, it's just plain harder to change it.

The best thing that could happen would be for e-Frontier to give up on the software itself, and throw it to the wind. Make the source code available to the community, and make their money selling content for it, and other applications. If they did that, and enough interested programmers took up the banner, you'd see an amazing amount of improvement. Things would get a little scattered and fragmented, there'd be multiple versions, and the documentation might get a little chaotic. But open source has given the world a lot of really neat software, especially in the CG area, and it would really blow the doors wide open.

As long as one company is developing Poser as a commercial product though, I really don't think it's going to change much. I'd love to be wrong, but that's just how things go in the software business. To stay in business, they have to make money, to make money they have to keep costs down while the revenue comes in, and making the massive improvements that so many people want while keeping the price point down just may not be doable.

Captain Jack

Poser Figure artist may fit the needs of the P4/pp people who don't want the advanced features of Poser 567

10/13/06

E-Frontier needs badly to rewrite their code to handle modern memory, multicore processors, and hard disk resources. It seems from the minimum system requirements that Poser 7 will at least use modern video cards. I bought a top of the line multimedia computer for Poser 6 only to find it could not render one byte more than my 5 year old computer (and it was only modestly faster). Every other graphics program I use benifited hugely, but it made no significant difference in Poser.

There are already a lot of advanced features in Poser six but you can't use all of its power all at once (most of its power all at once...some of its power all at once...even a little of its power all at once) without running out of memory. E-Frontier's answer to this has not yet been to fix their program. Their advice has been, don't use the programs features, istead make your renders small, with very little resolution, no Raytrace without reflections, small buckets long renders, etc.).

Microsoft has thousands of software writters wortking full time, and computer makers have tens of thousands of engineers working full time to advance the hardware side of things. E-Frontier probably doesn't have even 12 programers to keep up. Everyday they fall farther and farther behind the curve of developing computer power. Sooner or later, someone will take advantage of the gap with a product that tops Poser, and can use its legacy content.

'Sooner or later, someone will take advantage of the gap with a product that tops Poser, and can use its legacy content.'

Well, I'll be there when someone does because I'm getting sooo peeved with the poor rigging and memory issues in Poser.

Maybe it's actually going to be worth the extra investment in the long run of getting into a different, more expensive app.  Are there any more expensive Poser-like apps out there? I'm familiar with other 3d apps like 3ds Max and Softimage XSI, but can you get reasonably priced fully rigged base figures like you get with Poser?

Quote -  * ...* Are there any more expensive Poser-like apps out there? I'm familiar with other 3d apps like 3ds Max and Softimage XSI, but can you get reasonably priced fully rigged base figures like you get with Poser?

My experience is that with most of the "big ones" you have to roll your own with respect to rigging. There's a lot of content out there for sale and some for free, especially for 3D Studio Max, but a lot of it is just models that need to be rigged. On the other hand, rigging in some of the really expensive apps is a whole lot easier. A lot of the content is more expensive, too, possibly because of the mind set (I paid $3,000 for 3DS, I can charge $150 for my animateable alien-in-a-spacesuit model). I don't go to a lot of places that specialize in Maya and 3DS Max models, though, because there's no useful importers for their products for the apps I use, so there may be a lot more content out there than I'm aware of.

Turbo Squid is a good site to check out for content. They have all kinds of 3D stuff brokered for all kinds of artists, both for sale and for free. You can get a good feel for what kind of content is out there for different products there. It's also a good place to get free props for Poser; I use it quite a bit.

Captain Jack

Holy shit Jevans!!  You use Turbo Squid!!  You must be rolling in it!!  

Quote - Holy shit Jevans!!  You use Turbo Squid!!  You must be rolling in it!!  

Nah, I just get free stuff there. My wife keeps too close an eye on my pocket book, if you know what I mean.

I think I'm definitely going to keep my options open at any rate right now - no pre-ordering P7 for the time being.

Hey BTW, thanks for some interesting insights into the dynamics of software development.

Simple Rule for -----

Human beings are inherently flawed, hence computers, software and snowcones are inherently flawed.

ANY questions!

Quote - Nah, I just get free stuff there. My wife keeps too close an eye on my pocket book, if you know what I mean.

 

I hear that my wife has me on an allowance....LOL!! But I do get extra spending cash each year when the COLA kicks in on my pension. If I spend 3 grand on a program I'd find my bags packed and sitting on the front porch..LOL!!!

As far as P7? Who really knows as this point since no one has a copy of it yet. And as fas as ef wanting to stay in the hobbyist market? well, that was just a crazy thought. Who really knows what ef is shooting for outside of want every corp wants.

Without seeing any renders or more info we are all kinda in the dark for right now.

I use vue 5 esprite for rendering and can get some large renders before run out memory, though a memory manager help's.

Why im geting vue 6 esprite update is they have listen to all the users and they have done some major rewrite of the program and at last, i shouted bloody hell thier using an option that we came up with nearly 20 years ago.

Mike singleton on ZX Spectrum with his doomdarks revenge which we had weriting fun, it was a 64k program to run on 41k memory, it loaded what needed then dumped for rest.

Nice to see the yank's at last have learned from the most sought after programers when ST AND AMEGA came out, and 1 great thing for all you people with 4 gig memory vue 6 will recognise the full 4 gig.

Im on a p4 2.6 1 gig memory 256mg ati card and even if i cant us some features of 6 im not fussed as vue 6 still can do the stuff i need.

Looking at it vue 6 will import a poser figure and the full shader tree as well, so you can render stuff that was not possible in 5, so vue 6 worth the bloody investment.

Quote - My personal favorite peeve is not being able to move the camera by dragging in the figure window. I think that that one enhancement would improve the workflow in Poser immensely.

Try holding the space key or alt key while dragging in the preview.

Quote - Human beings are inherently flawed, hence computers, software and snowcones are inherently flawed.ANY questions!

• holds up lemon-lime snowcone *

I asked for orange.

"That isn't a question, sir, but thanks for contributing ...."

Ok, basic premise/disclaimer - Until EF tell us what's in P7, nobody knows what we're getting.

Having said that, I tend to agree with Captain Jack. P7 isn't likely to have any major code rewrite. And that means, no multiple undo, no memory management, and more bolt-on rooms to cater for any new functions. Any code rewrite or major rigging changes will almost certainly make older content obselete, unless EF find some method of conversion. And, as has been pointed out, that would put the price of poser up, so I doubt it's an option right now.

I'm not saying it'll never happen, but one thing everyone's forgetting is that this is EF's first real chance to make any money from poser since they bought it. For that reason alone, I don't see them pouring huge amounts of resources and manpower into a code rewrite. They'll want to see some bucks coming in for a few years before they even consider biting that particular bullet.

'So why don't E-Frontier re-write Poser from the ground up (aside from it being a time consuming process)? I would have thought that this would make Poser so much more advanced in one huge step.'

Well, DAZ have done it. They've written a posing app, daz studio, based on modern code, modern methods and windows-compatible shortcuts. It has a customisable (and modern) interface, an SDK for 3rd-party developers and a free scripting language. It's not up to the level of poser (6) yet, but in 4 years of development, it's made huge strides. In another 4 years, it could easily outclass poser (insert version number here). Oh, and it's free too.

But of course, it's taken 4 years to do it. and the only reason DAZ can afford to pay a dev team to build a program, then give it away free is that they make their money from content. Every new daz studio user is a potential DAZ customer, and most of them spend their money (money they didn't pay to buy software), in the DAZ store. EF don't have that option (at least, not to the same extent).

So yes, it can be done. It ain't easy, and a poser rewrite would actually be more difficult than strating from scratch, but anything's possible given time and money. whether it's worth doing isn't a developer's decision. It's down to those overpaid and generally-loathed folks who go by the dreaded name of Marketing Experts.

BTW, has anyone wondered why EF didn't improve the P6 figures, instead of wasting money on a new pair which will, no doubt, be destined for some virtual trashcan too?

Uh.... maybe the new ones are totally amazing.... Here's hoping.

mac

Well I pre-ordered Poser 5 AND 6 and I definately WILL NOT be doing it with 7!!!   I have found Poser 6 to be practically useless. I continue to get the "out of memory messages even after countless times trying different installations on each of my 4 very large (by 'Hobbyist standard's) PC's. and yes I have correctly installed all SR's. I want (neh, NEED) to ba able to output high resolution images and Poser 6 just WILL NOT allow me to do this, I had no problem's at all with high res textures in '5', OK...the time's needed on some renders was very high but I COULD do it if needed but '6'.........NO WAY JOSE'!!! It controls all my artistic endevour's by deciding for me what size textures i ought to be using....well enough is enough!!  I have recently started useing DS and up to now have had absolutely NO problems and this in a program that is GIVEN AWAY!!! granted, you have to purchase the plugin's but compared to the alternative this is small price to pay for a piece of software that at least does 'What it says on the tin'!! I've also been trying 'Quidam' another piece of software that although fairly limited at present does at least seem to be mostly useable in a way that the manufacturers claim and also show's great potential for the future. I'm really sorry to say this because I have allway's had a bit of a soft spot for the program but i'm affraid that for me I fear that Poser, at least in any of it's future incarnation's, is HISTORY!!

Quote -  * ...* Are there any more expensive Poser-like apps out there? I'm familiar with other 3d apps like 3ds Max and Softimage XSI, but can you get reasonably priced fully rigged base figures like you get with Poser?

Please check Quidam from N-Sided.

Quote - P7 isn't likely to have any major code rewrite.

I heard directly from E-f that poser 6 had some code rewritten and the poser 7 "goes a lot further".
As for what that will mean for functionality and performance there is no way of knowing at this point.
Just because it is not feasible to rewrite in one version change doesn’t mean it cant be done incrementally over several versions.

I looked at Quidam some time ago and I was quite impressed with some of what I saw. I liked the fine tuning options (not unlike the morph putty tool in P6) and how you can quickly dress your figure. But as it is now the meshes just arn't high resolution enough and the realistic figures look too cartoony for me. Looks like a cool tool for games designers though. Saying that, I will be keeping an eye on that quarter in the future.

It will also be interesting to see where D/S develops. I don't think it comes close to Poser as things stand, even with the available plugins, but if it offers more flexibility and performance as time goes on I'll certainly be taking a greater interest.

I'm in the position of not having purchased a vast quantity of content in the year or two that I've been working with Poser so it's easier for me to say 'to hell with whether old stuff will work if it gives me a better app'. I know this isn't the case with so many of you out there, and I know it must be a tough call for those marketing dudes to consider the investment of time and money. But the future is already happening around us in terms of computer power while Poser seems to be standing still on so many core levels. I mean, you could look at it this way: if there was a completely rewritten version of Poser available tomorrow with fantastic rigging for better bending & posing figures and super fast rendering with no memory issues, where cloth simulations solved a lot faster and hair rendered a lot faster - that would be worth it, right? With a cool and functional UI, multiple undo's, etc. All the things that are clunky now sorted. And although your old content might not work in that new version, you'd still be able to use it and render images in the older versions of Poser - they won't just disappear from your hard drives.

Wouldn't it even be worth spending a few more bucks on, if you really were going to be getting a nore up to date app with the potential to grow substantially for the next 10 years (maybe too optimistic there)?

I don't know.

Captain Jack, will you be purchasing the preorder?  Just curious.

Sharen

Ummm, mac? Only the -core- of DS is free. Add up the plug-ins, dude. =NOT= counting in Ghost, Fbx, or Puzzler, which have no real correlation in Poser, the total comes to $249.60. And you =still= do not have dynamic clothing or strand based hair or anything like the face room. Hell, let's drop Hand Grip as well; that makes it $234.65. Almost $235 to have an 'almost' Poser 5/6 app 'for free'. Like I and a few others said at the time and since; sure the core is free. The plugins to make it worth the time are where they are going for the throat, and since there will need to be distinct plugins for some kind of dynamic clothing and strand based hair, you could easily be looking at anywhere from $3-500 for that 'free' app to have the same capabilities as the current incarnation of Poser. And if P7 implements fbx support, then that 'free' pricetag jumps to $334.65....still with no dynamic cloth or hair. Now about advertising stategies.......

cool pic :D

All the bugs will be free with poser 7, you wont need to pay extra. :tt2:

Heh. Very good, Torulf!

If you think poser7 will be one big mass of bugs don't buy it & stick with Poser6/5/4/3/2/1, whichever has the least amount of bugs you're comfortable with.

Just a comment on Dale's post - by my crude figuring (from the current DAZ price list) all the D|S plugs except the FBX exporter is $180.40 and with the PC membership that's $156.53 (not $249.60). Just like EF and Poser 7, DAZ offered most, if not all these at reduced introductory prices. I have no use for any of the D|S plugs so for me D|S was free. I also have little interest in Poser's Cloth or Hair simulators. For cross platform users like me, the splitting of Poser PC and Mac into seperate licenses makes it much more expensive. If I were to preorder, for me to upgrade to Poser 7 will cost $259.98. This one marketing move was one of the main reason I moved more towards D|S (and Poser 6's defective Mac disks). Best; Dan

Oops, my bad... That's what I get for using the windows calculator.... Still, the point is that only the core app is free. To get things like IK, shaders, deformers, etc, you will have to pony up $$$. If the functional equivalent of P4 is sufficient, that may make sense. But there is far too much implication about that DS is eqivalent to Poser (no version given, which leaves the uninformed to assume they mean the latest version), when feature-wise, the opposite is true.

If you leave out all the plugins D|S is Poser1 but without the ugly figures.

not knowing how to use shaders or deformers, and loathing IK (probably just don't understand the need for it..;) D|S is still free to me..;) I'm still struggling to learn 5..;)

Quote - Captain Jack, will you be purchasing the preorder?  Just curious. Sharen

Almost certainly... I just want to double check the system requirements. I'll very likely be upgrading to Windows Vista next year (I use WIndows at work, and it's helpful for me to keep the same O/S version at home), and I'm sure I'll get Poser 7. Even if it's not be re-written, it'll be re-compiled, and I'll likely get better performance with it when I upgrade my O/S. And, as long as I'm going to get it, I might as well do the pre-order and get the other goodies, I s'pose.

Captain Jack