I have managed to download the demo and here are some very preliminary impressions:

• PFA might be a 'whole new program' but it is very closely related to Poser. In fact, if I have P6 running, I can't load PFA - trying to do so just brings up the P6 window. Also, when I first loaded it and switched from the document window to the render window, it displayed the last render I'd done with P6!!

• there's no material room. None that I can see anyway, and I have searched the reference manual for all instances of 'material'. This alone would appear to make it impossible to use shaders such as Olivier's Art Materials, for example, which means that at least one of the images in the demo reel would never be achievable, because I am sure that was done with Olivier's shaders. There are no materials supplied as we understand them, although there are of course some texture maps, so MAT files might well work as expected.

• given that, anyone buying or downloading P5 or P6 materials is going to be sorely disappointed.

• the readme is clearly lifted straight from the P6 readme. Nothing wrong with that, except that it refers to pages in the manual - the P6 manual, not the reference manual supplied with PFA!

• the sketch designer is completely identical to that in P6. I can't see that anything has been added.

TBH, I can't see any differences at all other than the fact that PFA is clearly a much reduced subset of P6. All in all, I think my initial look comes close to justifying Veritas' objections. As a pose modeller for conventional artists, it's fine. But I must emphasise, this is a very quick preliminary test, and others might want to take a look in case I'm in error.

Steve