I don't know if anyone else is having major problems with Poser 7 but it seems as this point, the SR1 really made things worse for me.  Every time I render a scene, the progress bar moves as normal until it finishes.  After finishing, the render window remains open and Poser 7 stops responding.   I never had any problems with Poser 6 with this  issue.  I do have Vista Ultimate and Poser 6 works great.  I further dove into the mechanics of Poser 7 and every time I try to change a setting, it stops responding.  I don't get it.  What exactly was the point of releasing Poser 7 if it's not going to work correctly?  I don't remember Poser 6  having these many problems. 
Adrian

To make more money!  I can't send back an electronic download now can I!

Render speed alone is very much worth it to me.  I avoided Vista based on many reports of bugs, and Poser 7 works very well for me on Windows XP 64-bit Edition.

Not to come to any defense of EF but it took 3 SRs to fix P6 and get it going correctly. I wish I had more answers because I hate to see anyone struggle. Software is a funny thing. Some folks have a bucket load of heartache whilst others have no issues at all. It's just nuts!

Is vista even on the list of supported OS ? If it isn't, i don't see how anyone can complain if poser 7 doesn't work on it. May as well complain that P7 doesn't work on Windows 98 or Linux.

E-Frontier has a side-by-side feature comparison of Poser 5, 6 and 7:
http://www.e-frontier.com/go/poser/datasheet

Windows Vista is not listed as a supported OS.  Windows 2000 and Windows XP are.

These types of messages are pointless too. This is a community of users that seem to continually complain about the software they are using. Nobody forced you to upgrade . . . now talking about Vista it's not on the list of OSes supported . . . and I am sure that it also will have unwanted features. EF have improved Poser and 7 SR1 is better than 6 SR3. IMHO EF has given us a neat and inexpensive 3D program.

shrug... in the IT world, a lot of us are asking "what was the point of releasing Vista?". Of course, the questions we have are on technical merits (Vista Home Basic may as well have been called XP Service Pack 3 IMHO, if it wasn't for the massive code bloat involved). As for Poser 7? I got to see it in action @ work this week (I'm a sysadmin for folks who do graphics R&D, so I get to wander about a bit and be nosy). From what I've seen so far, it appears that EF actually overhauled the codebase, making it respond faster and behave better in lots of areas (and the multi-thread render w/ its faster response times is a nice touch). I haven't had time to really dig into it, but it may indeed be worth it as far as an app goes. As for Vista being your OS (which I suspect is the root of the trouble), umm, good luck - many folks in the tech arena have said flat-out that Vista was going to cause problems in graphics apps w/ MSFT's questionable implementation of an OpenGL -> DX10 emulation chain. Makes me glad I've got a Mac, truth be told. /P

Actually there are three HUGE new features in P7:

1. Keyframed ERC, also known as Dependent Parameters.
2. Animation layers, still sort of unexplored
3. Customizable keyboard shortcuts.

I love all three, but because my computer is on the
'bucketload of heartache' side of the fence this time, I haven't
been able to use them much.  When P6 was introduced, I
was on the 'no issues at all' side, and wondered why others
were complaining.

Multithreaded rendering all by itself would have been enough for me to upgrade.

I got to try it out at a mates house...and don't like it.
The speed to render didn't seem that greatly improved.
it locked up 95% of the time just when he was trying to switch runtimes..it just....closed itself. poof gone.
though, it did render the hair ..softer looking. only way I can explain it..the hair seemed to look softer(not dynamic hair just regular hair figure).
I think I will save myself the money on this one and let it ride. poser 5 didn't strike me well But I was real happy with p6. sooooo I am thinking p7 wont catch my fancy but I bet p8 will lol.

and I will state something again, if you don't like threads where people are speaking their minds about a buggy proggy don't read it. but remember it is threads that point out and explain what frustrates the customers that make the companies do improvements.
if everyone just went "OMG like this is the best most perfect program EVER"...what would there be to strive for? how would they know what to fix?
complaint threads have their place and most definitely their use.

oh and please tell me someone wont do the "If you dont like us talking about the threads that complain YOU dont read them..." I wasnt..I was reading a thread about p7 and issues there of and was interupted by the "what is the point of this thread" deal....

The biggest selling point for me was multiple undo. Can't think how many times I wished I could just undo the last few steps when using P5.

In response to "P6 needed 3 SR's"....... I've never loaded a single one of them.  Never had a problem.  Not one.   Faster renders, multiple undo's and "shortcuts" that i can easily click my mouse on something anyway and do, is hardly enough to make me want to shell out more cash (yet).    Since  I can render in P6 at lightening speed, and always have been able to, the idea of a "faster" render i almost find impossible.   I hope i find someone who has p7 so i can actually see that in action, as I cant say anything about it until i see it.   Considering i can render a HUGE multifigured rediculously textured scene, in high dpi and finishing, in around 45 seconds, ....... how much faster can it be? (and its on an off the shelf HP pavillion with 2 gigs of ram, no fancy stuff)

Quote - if everyone just went "OMG like this is the best most perfect program EVER"...what would there be to strive for? how would they know what to fix?

True, but do you expect them to fix the OS as well ? An OS, which they never even claimed could run Poser 7 in the first place ? Its well documented that Vista gets conniptions at the slightest hint of what it thinks of as a 'hack'. Even if that 'hack' is nothing more then the legitimate owner trying to do his day to day job. It is quite possible that at the end of the render when P7 tries to allocate HDD space to write the image, Vista thinks it is some virus or something and tells it to sod off. How is something like that P7 or eF's fault ?

Yes companies pull all kinds of crap and put out buggy releases to meet their deadlines and budgets. Its a sad fact that we users are often treated as paying beta testers. But i hope you also realize that not every instance of a 'bug' is due to the software. Sometimes its just the user doing something the software was never designed to handle.

When/If eF release a compatibility update or a version that officially supports Vista, then come and bash them and their cat. Otherwise there really isn't a case to be made here.

I mentioned 3 SRs because that is what it took for Ef to feel they had addressed all the problems people were having. People fail to understand that not all computer configs people are using are the same. Each has it's own characteristics and kinks. Some people had no need to install any of the SRs for P6 and had great results and could be due to the characteristics and hardware in your machine while others went threw a nightmare and needed the SRs. Just because it may work in one machine doesn't mean it will on another. That is the same with people we all have a way of doing things and it may differ between us but it doesn't mean it's wrong it just means it works well for that individual.

It may take a few more SRs to fix some of the things in P7 since we all don't have the same machines. If there is a software in the world that has never released an SR or an update then that's cool. But with hardware changing SRs and updates will always be needed. Communicating problems is a good thing that's how things are fix and how problems are solved. However, you can't expect a software to perform without flaws if that software is not support by your OS. That is liken to putting the wrong weight motor oil in your car and not expecting it to have performance problems.

We are humans and are pron to frustration and it is nice to have a place to vent. Better here than punching a wall or worse.

shrug

This is beginning to sound like an old-fashioned broken record:

Brief and to the point: P7 works just fine for me.  Even with SR1 installed.  Better than P6 ever did.  And I liked P6.

P7 has features that P6 lacks.  In my experience, P7 SR1 is more stable than P6 -- and can do more than P6 can.  Multi-threaded rendering being one major factor.

That's all of the justification that I need for e frontier to have released Poser 7.  I am glad that they did.

I'll consider installing Vista after the dust settles.  That might be several months from now.  Even though my PC is only a couple of months old.

I'm sure you ALL said the samething about P4, P5 & P6 when they were released.  It's the same whine, just very well scripted for every Poser forum. Go complain to e-f. Fillout bug reports. I have an old machine and know darn well I wouldn't be able to run P7 on it because my system is too old. Common sense tells me not to upgrade at this time. ;)

Instead of buying blind, wait a bit. Just like with any software there's going to be bugs with every new release. It's a given.

Months ago you were all bragging about the new version now, it's complaints every other thread.

"Keyframed ERC, also known as Dependent Parameters" o.k., now we know what that is. there's a cryptic reference to it in the appendix. so perhaps "blendtype" refers to the animation layers.

Quote - > Quote - if everyone just went "OMG like this is the best most perfect program EVER"...what would there be to strive for? how would they know what to fix?

True, but do you expect them to fix the OS as well ? An OS, which they never even claimed could run Poser 7 in the first place ? Its well documented that Vista gets conniptions at the slightest hint of what it thinks of as a 'hack'. Even if that 'hack' is nothing more then the legitimate owner trying to do his day to day job. It is quite possible that at the end of the render when P7 tries to allocate HDD space to write the image, Vista thinks it is some virus or something and tells it to sod off. How is something like that P7 or eF's fault ?

Yes companies pull all kinds of crap and put out buggy releases to meet their deadlines and budgets. Its a sad fact that we users are often treated as paying beta testers. But i hope you also realize that not every instance of a 'bug' is due to the software. Sometimes its just the user doing something the software was never designed to handle.

When/If eF release a compatibility update or a version that officially supports Vista, then come and bash them and their cat. Otherwise there really isn't a case to be made here.

O.o I wasnt talking about the OS. I was talking about the debate about p6 Vs. P7.
not the OS. trust me no way on 7worlds would I put vista on my puter.
I was simply talking about the whole "if you hate it dont upgrade" thing about p7.
P7 is like p5 was. buggy and standing on legs that were pushed out to soon. frankly a nice update to p6 would of gone over better, instead of dressing up p7 with tons of "content" and blowing whistles and bells. yes multiple undo's are nice..BUT frankly when I was sitting at the desk and would try nothing more then to open a new runtime and the thing would just..not do it..then tried it again..and it was just..gone.
poof.
vanished.
so was all the work..so what good frankly is an undo when I have to redo a whole scene?
it is buggy as all heck. and just like p5 there are some with NO issues with it and others that the mere sight of it starting makes the whole puter cry.
AAAAAAAAAAAND...

frankly...vista..just another gimic for nothing.

I get something weird too in rendering.  Before the SR P7 rendered fast, now it still renders fast till it gets to the very end, sometimes the whole last row left or just the lower right-hand corner.  Then, it slows down insanely, sometimes taking more than the time it took to render the rest of the image!!   It does finish eventually though so it's not actually stuck.   Other than that, SR1 seems to have fixed all the other problems I had been having, especially the build library crash.   

We'll just have to wait for SR2 to fix the render issue now :)

Quote - I'm sure you ALL said the samething about P4, P5 & P6 when they were released.  It's the same whine, just very well scripted for every Poser forum. Go complain to e-f. Fillout bug reports. I have an old machine and know darn well I wouldn't be able to run P7 on it because my system is too old. Common sense tells me not to upgrade at this time. ;)

Dunno... Poser 5 was a morass of bugs... it was a righteous mess compared to Poser4 and Poser ProPack. Poser 6 fixed a most of them, but it ran (and still runs) fairly slow on my (then high-end) dual G5 Mac (at least when compared to D|S, though a lot of that is just MHO...) Poser 7 I only got to see a little of, and it appears to run very well; I think this has to do with an overhaul of the codebase to stomp out the cruft and the crap. I'm considering a purchase of the thing myself, so I pay attention to the posts that mention its performance. Now, I've seen the whole development cycle thingy from both ends - I was on the code-monkey side of things when DAZ|Studio reached 1.0. Yes you're right that all builds have bugs (moreso in Windows than Macs, mostly because of the HUGE variety of hardware and software configurations that Windows PC's come in, and the fact that Windows itself is not as stable as most other OSes). BUT... There is a huge difference between the bug-fest that Poser 5 was, and what we have now, so saying that it's all the same is silly IMHO. I do agree that buying blindly is just plain dumb, esp. for software that has three figures in its price tag. OTOH, if you are paying three figures for the thing, expecting it to work to satisfaction is a given, and it should be a given. In this particular case, the user was outside of specifications (Vista), so I don't have much sympathy. /P

In my case P7 runs better than P6. Rendering in P6 was pure hell waiting for hours on a render that may not finish. Outside of a couple of SNAFUs on my part SR1 has been running fine. My errors caused the problems because I wasn't paying attention.

This is why I am waiting to ever install Vista. To many horror stories just yet.

Sealtm2
I even had this problem with XP Pro.  So the OS isn't the problem.   I know  Vista has it's issues, but  why does Poser 6 work fine and Poser 7 doesn't?  It's a mystery.
Adrian

First - did you do the upgrade thing to Vista, or did you do a fresh install? (Rule #1 of Windows upgrades... never do one. Just flush the HDD and install the new version fresh... always.) 2ndly - When it was just XP Pro: what kind of machine are we talking here, what else is on it (esp. games-wise), and what else is/was running at the time? Also, did you use Microsoft's video drivers (puke), or the OEM's (e.g. Dell/HP/Gateway...), or the vidcard chipset maker's driver (the least crappy option if the video isn't embedded, unless it's an ATI-based vidcard, in which case you're screwed if you use 'em)? ...see? THIS is why I use a Mac for all this 3D stuff (at least until someone @ EF grows a pair and starts selling a Linux version of Poser). /P

Poser, along with alot of other 3D App's and Stability has never been used in the same sentence.

RorrKonn
http://www.atomic-3d.com

Penguinisto wrote:

I do agree that buying blindly is just plain dumb, esp. for software that has three figures in its price tag.

I think that's just partly true. When you think of buying a brandnew application it's throwing away money when you haven't investigated first what's worth. If you already have such an application like poser and you want an upgrade, I blindly buy the upgrade because I know there will be bugs and I know that I will upgrade anyway. I always keep the old version installed unitll I know I can safely put it away.
I'm very pleased with poser inspite of its shortcomings and I want this thing to continued, so I buy every upgrade they make, because if no-one did poser would die a silence death.
And then I start complaining about every bug I find and make sure that  the right people read those complaints, untill got what I have paid for.
And I know some people call this beta-testing but even with four figure price tag applications you will find bugs inspite of their thorough beta-testing, and from those applications you should expect that you can buy it blindly.

regards,

Thijs

My puter is not the best..anymore (sniffles it use to be good now it is behind again I dream of the day I get my own alienware...) but p6? I can render a 5000x5000 at 300dpi with no problem most times..MOST times(unless I am hitting some insanely hard shadows or such) doesnt take hours either...some glitches sure..but NOTHING compared to what I saw on that puter with p7 and his puter is far better then mine.
I did like(like I said) how the hair does seem to render softer looking in p7 but is that worth the headaches people seem to be having for the most part with it? nope.

Quote - First - did you do the upgrade thing to Vista, or did you do a fresh install? (Rule #1 of Windows upgrades... never do one. Just flush the HDD and install the new version fresh... always.) 2ndly - When it was just XP Pro: what kind of machine are we talking here, what else is on it (esp. games-wise), and what else is/was running at the time? Also, did you use Microsoft's video drivers (puke), or the OEM's (e.g. Dell/HP/Gateway...), or the vidcard chipset maker's driver (the least crappy option if the video isn't embedded, unless it's an ATI-based vidcard, in which case you're screwed if you use 'em)? ...see? THIS is why I use a Mac for all this 3D stuff (at least until someone @ EF grows a pair and starts selling a Linux version of Poser). /P

Pen
I did a fresh install with Vista Ultimate.  I let Microsoft DL the drivers for my video card and the motherboard stuff.  It's working great accept Poser 7 doesn't work at all.  But it didn't work with XP either.  It's full of bugs and it's worse now ever since the SR1.  I just built this machine so it's up to date with all the fancy stuff.
Adrian

Quote - I don't know if anyone else is having major problems with Poser 7 but it seems as this point, the SR1 really made things worse for me.  Every time I render a scene, the progress bar moves as normal until it finishes.  After finishing, the render window remains open and Poser 7 stops responding.   I never had any problems with Poser 6 with this  issue.  I do have Vista Ultimate and Poser 6 works great.  I further dove into the mechanics of Poser 7 and every time I try to change a setting, it stops responding.  I don't get it.  What exactly was the point of releasing Poser 7 if it's not going to work correctly?  I don't remember Poser 6  having these many problems. 
Adrian

I also am running P7 SR1 under Vista, but 64 bit Business version. For me to make P7 much more stable, I set the compatibility mode (right click P7.exe, properties, compatibility tab) to Windows 2000. 

Hope this jelps.

Quote - I did a fresh install with Vista Ultimate.  I let Microsoft DL the drivers for my video card and the motherboard stuff.  It's working great accept Poser 7 doesn't work at all.  But it didn't work with XP either.  It's full of bugs and it's worse now ever since the SR1.  I just built this machine so it's up to date with all the fancy stuff.
Adrian

What graphics hardware do you have and and what driver version are you running? We had reports of Poser locking up under Vista just by bringing up the confirmation dialog for deleting an object. Once those users updated to the latest NVIDIA drivers (released roughly two weeks ago) the problem disappeared. We saw similar effects during internal testing (Poser wouldn't run under Vista on GeForce 6150 LE until ForceWare 100.65 was installed). Not sure what the status is on XP or with other graphics hardware vendors.

Windows and Poser both in the past have been released in need of fixes and a year or two of stabilization before they deliver on their promises. If you've 'upgraded' to both Vista and P7 at theissame early stage of the game, expect headache and heartache. I'm not excusing either Microsoft or e-frontier, I'm just pointing out the reasonable expectation based on history.

I'm using P7 with the service pack on XP and have had 0 problems since installation. IMHO, P7 was worth the upgrade price. P6 had some issues that made it difficult to render certain scenes. I haven't encountered anything like that so far. About the only problem I've had lately was running it for hours without restarting it. It had started to crawl- so I suspect there is a small memory leak left in someplace.

Quote - > Quote - I did a fresh install with Vista Ultimate.  I let Microsoft DL the drivers for my video card and the motherboard stuff.  It's working great accept Poser 7 doesn't work at all.  But it didn't work with XP either.  It's full of bugs and it's worse now ever since the SR1.  I just built this machine so it's up to date with all the fancy stuff.

Adrian

What graphics hardware do you have and and what driver version are you running? We had reports of Poser locking up under Vista just by bringing up the confirmation dialog for deleting an object. Once those users updated to the latest NVIDIA drivers (released roughly two weeks ago) the problem disappeared. We saw similar effects during internal testing (Poser wouldn't run under Vista on GeForce 6150 LE until ForceWare 100.65 was installed). Not sure what the status is on XP or with other graphics hardware vendors.

I have the Nvidia 8800 GTX as a video card.  Let me know which version of drivers I'm suppose to use.  That may be my problem.  Thanks.
Adrian

I also am running P7 SR1 under Vista, but 64 bit Business version. For me to make P7 much more stable, I set the compatibility mode (right click P7.exe, properties, compatibility tab) to Windows 2000. 

Hope this jelps.

Sam
I did exactly what you told me to do and WOW!!  It worked.  It's rendering normal now and I'll see if it will continued to be more stable.  Thanks again.
Adrian

Quote -  

Sam
I did exactly what you told me to do and WOW!!  It worked.  It's rendering normal now and I'll see if it will continued to be more stable.  Thanks again.
Adrian

:-) Gald to have helped! BTW, I just let Vista take care of loading the drivers for my eVGA 8800 GTS card, very stock drivers I'm sure, but so far so good. Eventually I'll switch to authentic nVidia drivers. My Core 2 Duo E6600 kicks some serious a$$ over my old Athlon 64 3000+!

Quote - > Quote -  

Sam
I did exactly what you told me to do and WOW!!  It worked.  It's rendering normal now and I'll see if it will continued to be more stable.  Thanks again.
Adrian

 

:-) Gald to have helped! BTW, I just let Vista take care of loading the drivers for my eVGA 8800 GTS card, very stock drivers I'm sure, but so far so good. Eventually I'll switch to authentic nVidia drivers. My Core 2 Duo E6600 kicks some serious a$$ over my old Athlon 64 3000+!

Sam
Sounds like you have an awesome machine.  I myself am partial to AMD so I built an AM2 recently with the GTX 8800.  It's a work horse.  Thanks for your help.
Adrian