Quote - Does poser 7 support normals mapping? If so, the polycount of the model isn't that important.

You dont need it in poser... Since firefly is a REYES renderer, it does displacement mapping pretty fast. So you can use that instead of normal maps, and have it look better too.

Quote - I believe that the day is coming when you'll be able to create digital clones of anyone -

Yep, we are getting quite close. The davey jones character was a fully CG human in most of that Pirates movie. Also that shot in the new Superman movie where they resurrected brando (though briefly) Digital stunt doubles are already quite common, all the spiderman movies, xmen, matrix movies etc all used them to good effect. FaceRobot and that auto facial anim capture system they were showing at last SIGGRAPH are also quite cool and fast. As is that human skin recreation system that someone posted here a few weeks back. Now all that is needed is for the tech to become cheaper/more common and hardware support.

I believe the 'put your face on your game character' thing in some of the new XBOX 360 and Wii games is a good step in this direction as well.