Quote - How about one-touch, easy to understand realistic lighting?  No parameters to set, or very few.

Something like Maxwell already does this:

http://www.maxwellrender.com/

It renders out photoreal images without needing any kind of complex setup. Just create your meshes, assign real world materials to them like 'chrome' or 'concrete' etc, add a sun or a light with a wattage and push render. It does all the rest. Its quickly becoming the standard in all kinds of architectural work.

As for speed, well you have to be realistic here. You are trying to mimic the very complex interaction of light with material and media. I mean this is the kind of stuff that gives quantum physicists and supercomputers a nightmare. So of course you are gonna have a tough time simulating it on a mere home computer.

CG apps have basically taken 2 different approaches to solving the problem. One is to make it as simple to use as possible, which is fast to use but inefficient and takes huge render times. The other is to make it as flexible as possible, which is hard to setup but can be very optimised and renders fast. Till now most apps have followed the fast and flexible approach, but some recent ones like Maxwell are also going the other way since CPU speeds are now getting fast enough to accommodate the inefficiency. It is still quite a bit slower then a nicely tuned render though.

As for when we get all this in Poser, well your guess is good as mine there :)