Attached Link: Link to new PoserPro info on eFrontier website

I am not very excited by this. What good is a render farm if the animation tools are not worthy?

And I hate "hosted scenes". I mean, if you've got Max or Cinema or Maya for goodness sake, move assets in, okay, but learn those programs.  

That's just my two cents.

::::: Opera :::::

As far as hosted scenes, in some cases that means totally rerigging figures and content, and that ads a lot of man hours into doing a job.

If a scene can be hosted, then you can take advantage of the huge amount of psoer content that's easy to use, and animate.

Combined with the power of some of the higher end apps, you get a pro looking result but with the ease of setup and use in poser.

Poser then becomes a inexpensive tool for pro studios, and all that available content is very atractive to get quick work done.

In the pro 3d world, time IS money, and usually a lot of it.

That said, I don't see enough really new "must have" features for myself, other then possibly normal mapping, which IMHO should really be added in P7 base.

operaguy - Thanks for the link. Being someone who imports & renders to Vue, I'm not sure if this new version will give me anything new that I'll need.

Noted:

Q. Can I upgrade to Poser Pro from Poser 7?
A. For a limited time users who have purchased Poser 7 will have the option to side-grade * to the Base Version of Poser Pro* *at a significantly lower price.

I'll be curious to find out precisely what "significantly lower" means.

I'll be buying this new version regardless.  For one thing, I just plain want it -- but I basically have to buy it, too.  Even so -- it's always nice to factor a significantly lower price into the mix.  It'll also serve to make the package more attractive to those who are sitting on the fence about it.

No GI   If they'd added some form of GI to rendering I'd probably have gone for it.
No mentioned improvement to the multithreaded algo (to me this means it isn't likely to be improved)

When you look at the table, the differences between P7 and Pro are very slim indeed - the two big items are network rendering, and some improvements to content export.  After my bad experiences with BodyStudio I'm disappointed they bought it, that's a reason AGAINST purchase, to me.  That they passed up interPoser for Cinema4D import/export is kind of mind boggling.  I wonder if they even talked to Robert at all.

I'm not too pumped about their new figures either, based on previous examples.  Pass!

When I say I hate "hosted scenes" I mean scenes set up and animated in Poser, then opened in Max for lighting and render, with no adjustments to anything possible in Max. This is what Body Studio (supposedly, I had bad fortune with it) does and what PoserPro will do.

"Moving assets" on the hand...is something else. That's what Collada is for, right? You export a model from Poser via Collada which supposedly facilitates transfer of the assets live into Max with Rig, Morphs, Texture Maps intact. I doubt shaders will translate. Then, you can shade, light, pose, animate and morph in Max.

So, if one did not want a Poser render farm, nor hosting of full scenes in other apps, but just a good way of utilizing PoserDaz content in Max, then all you'd need would be Collada export. That could be a plugin to Poser7 for a lot less money.

By the way, even if a major PoserDaz model can be translated into Max with rig intact....it will be a Stranger in a Strange Land; not rigged in a way the other tools of Max are meant to operate. At least that's what I've been told.

There are already some programs that claim to get PoserDaz content into Max with Rig, TextureMaps and Morphs, but I have not tried them.

I am not out to throw cold water on Poser; I like Poser. But PoserPro seems like it is on two missions that do not agree with each other: 1) Poser is fine for setting up scenes in its viewport, getting human models clothed and posed, animating them. But then since FireFly is not the best, host the scene in Max (etc) for lighting and render; 2) The Poser/Daz world is only good as an asset feeder. Do everything in Max, but give me a great way to get the content into the side door of Max.

Now if the animation tools and the viewport power were kicked up in Poser, I'd be more excited.

::::: Opera :::::

Quote - I am not out to throw cold water on Poser; I like Poser. But PoserPro seems like it is on two missions that do not agree with each other...

I had thought the same, yeah.

I agree with you pjz, they should have introduced GI, it should be standard now.
Other apps are far superior in the rendering department, I think people will only continue to use Poser to render in because of cost issues with the other apps.

I forgot about the new figures. If they do better than the splendid V4, I will eat my hat and produce my credit card. Maybe. 

I agree with pjz about the dumb sequencing of multithreaded and its implications for a dumb render farm. What I mean is, with multiple cpu's assigned different buckets in a frame, if the faster cpu gets finished first, it just waits for the slow guys to get done with their sections, the next frame comes up and they all start again. I believe that is how multithreading currently operates. Dumb.

Not to mention: the render farm would be much more useful if the various computers could just work on their own frames, completely. That way if there is a failure, you just rerender the frame in question, as opposed to fallout buckets (or worse, slightly askew buckets) on hundreds of otherwise okay frames.

If they have addressed these issues and release a brilliant render farm implementation, I'll eat my hat and produce my CC. 

::::: Opera :::::

I have to admit that I would like to have seen more being offered in terms of additional features -- for the price difference that we are talking about here.  But, IMO, the jury is still out on exactly how useful this new version of Poser is going to prove to be.  I'm still in a wait and see mode about the program: and will be until after its release.

(Hmmm.....if it's called "PP" for short, then it'll displace "Propack" from that same abbreviation.)

You know.......I wonder if this current "feature list" will actually be the final version of the features upon release.  I note that while the initial announcement concerning Poser Pro included a hosting plug-in for Lightwave, any mention of hosting for Lightwave is conspicously missing from under the hosting tab found in this .pdf list.  Curious.

Soooo...., if I'm right PoserPro comes with a base and a pro version, so you'll have a PoserPro-base and a PoserPro-pro. Besides from being the stupidest thing I heard in weeks I'm afraid this will be the end of Poser as we  know it. If you look at the comparison-chart, there won't be much advantage for the regular Poser-users. This is an "upgrade" to make Poser more digestible for the Big-application users like 3D-max, MAYA and Cinema4D. The only "significantly" lower price, I'm willing to pay for this upgrade, does have to be lower than the upgrade-price for Poser-7. As far I'm considered the 64bit-render support had to be in release 7 instead of  the many useless horn and bells, like talkdesigner or animation layers which nobody uses (at least I don't see anybody use it), because there is no support for DAZ-models.  I agree that multiple-processor support was a big step forward, but when you implement that, 64-support isn't the next step, but has to be done in the same time. No, E-frontier waits untill the next "upgrade" and charges double the price for a new poser-version, which is only meant for major application-users and not for the common Poser-user.
I hope this upgrade is only a side-step, and we'll have Poser 8 within some reasonable time and for a reasonable price. But for now I'm not upgrading to Poser-pro.

Best regards,

Bopperthijs

I've looked at the comparisons in full now & I actually can't see what the average Poser user would get from this upgrade, especially for the price concerned. If this has put Poser 8 back then I am disappointed. Not very good EF!

Yes I agree if they have Poser 8 hot on the tail of this "sidebar" PoserPro, that would be different and sensible. Maybe GI in Poser8?

:: og ::

I wonder what an "illustration based texture set" is?

It certainly does seem a curious business model. The stated aim is to allow people to use Poser in a professional pipeline, so the full version gets you a 10-node license. But I suspect that any professional user would want to render in a high-end app, not in Poser, so the Collada export and plugins are more important and you don't need the 64-bit renderer or network rendering. On the other hand, if you want to render in 64-bit Poser itself across a 10-node network, why do you need the asset transfer facilities?

Seems to be an odd mixture of diametrically-opposed features that would be better served by add-ons - i.e. buy the node licenses if you want them or buy the asset transfers if you need them, etc.

Either way it's of no interest to me personally, since I render in C4D and use the excellent  interPoser for asset transfer.

Yes -- $499 seems to be a bit steep for the extras which are listed in this package.  And yes: plain-vanilla Poser users might not have much of a reason to sign onto this one.

Perhaps the term "Pro" is meant to be taken literally in this case.  I don't see huge advantages over Poser 7 being offered to the hobbyist.  And leaving out Lightwave.......hmmmmm.

But I'll continue to hold out hope until after we see what it can actually do upon release.

More to the point, if you want to render in a 10-node network, and have hardware worth doing it on - why would you settle for frankly very low-quality render technology as will be packaged with the discussed version of Poser? 

Quote - Seems to be an odd mixture of diametrically-opposed features that would be better served by add-ons - i.e. buy the node licenses if you want them or buy the asset transfers if you need them, etc.

 
This should have been the way for EF to go, straightforward & we have the choice.

I don't like being negative, but for the price, this is really ridiculous. It'd be interesting to see how many people go for it.

If you are willing to spend $499, you'd be better off putting the money towards Vue or Carrara.

Well, that guy at Body Studio has some magical quality about him to convince people to buy his product. Pjz and I fell for it. (yes I know some people are happy with their Body studio). Maybe he just talked EF into it!

Also, it could be an attempt at Carrara innoculation. When Carrara gets cloth, watch out.

::::: Opera :::::

Quote - If you are willing to spend $499, you'd be better off putting the money towards Vue or Carrara.

Or for a bit more, Cinema 4D - then you not only have a very powerful modeler, but one of the best texturing and UVmapping suites anywhere, AND very good Poser content import (interPoser).

I recall hearing the suggestion expressed that Poser 6 was actually Poser 5.5 -- and that Poser 7 was actually Poser 6.5.  Well -- based upon the feature list as it's currently given: this one might be legitimately thought of as Poser 7.5.  Outside of the high-end hosting and perhaps the render-farm capabilities -- this looks more like an incremental upgrade than it does like a revolutionary new version.  

However: as Gareee has suggested earlier in this thread, it might be worth a lot to production houses looking for time-saving solutions.

And there's always the possibility that e-frontier might surprise us before it's done.

So is poser pro basically Poser 8?

I have been hearing alot of hype for it but I just got started with poser and wonder what the fuss is about.

No, poser pro is poser pro. I don;t think we've seen anything about a poser 8 release or feature set yet.

Seing this feature list does beg the question though, what would be included in a poser 8 release different then what we're seeing in poser pro?

Guess a wishlist would be a good start.

I'd want:

16 bit displacement mapping likte Zbrush can do, and I want to see it in preview.
Morph brush tool refined, and able to do x symmetry at least on multiple groups (like say, both forearms.)

Bettter dual monitor support

Image map baking

build in poser physics, and the poser liquid utilites

Allow fbm or erc morph controls in any body part, so I don' have to rely on an outside utility for it.

Since it won't be a complete engine build from the ground up unless we wait 2 more years, that's pretty much all I could think of, but there just isn;t enough "wow" in there for a full new release.

If they SHOULD decide to do a complete rebuild from the ground up, by the time they get it out, DS and carerra would probably have so much developement time to eat them up by fixing broken poser compatibility features, and adding rigging and a poser like material room.

gonna be an interesting next few years for DAZ and EF, since they seem to be putting distance between them in different ways.

Quote - gonna be an interesting next few years for DAZ and EF, since they seem to be putting distance between them in different ways.

Yeah.  sigh  I'm afraid that you're right.  Too bad.  I for one don't see that as a good thing.

I still come back to my original question, which some have echoed here.  If you are talking about a major professional Poser render farm with 10 nodes and all that implies...

you are making films. Animated films.

If so, where are the advanced annimation tools? In Carrara you have a menu of different 'tweener modes, including one called "noise"!  You can have multiple graphs open at once and move keys around like .... well like it should be. Of course Bezier curves with beautiful responsive handles. Etc etc etc.

Looks like they are building the barn first. I hope the horses are on the way.

::::: Opera ::::

Well since both use poser content (as it exists now) it's ok.

For end users, it might be a win win situation.. they don;t care which app wins, so long as there are new features, and cheap prices.

For content creators though, there could be a big split, and some major issues.

Which format to support? Which camp to join? Which feature set to support?

As it is, it's already a minor nightmare trying to suport what various programs are already out there.

And joining one camp or other might loose a lot of business for potential products.

its already very difficult to support yourself as a content creator, amd this might end up loosing enough business for enough creators that we see a huge reduction in quality content creators.

We've already lost some really major developers, like Neftis, Curio, and Anton, because the money wasn't worth the work involved, especially when you look at how much you can make in the real cg world as opposed to puttering around in the poserverse.

Daz continues to drive prices down to the PC club, and as long as you can make it back with selling massive quantities, you are fine, but if not, then customers perceived value  for content has dropped to the point that non major releases have a very hard time making enough money to be worthwhile. That's why we don;t see a lot of male accessories and content.. the money's already just not there for them.

I've been on the edge for months now leaving the content creating arena, because sales just weren't there even for new items. Fortunately the new Moon release I did over at Daz did enough nubers to make doing it worthwhile for a while longer, but that could change with a few dud type releases.

You'll still see the flood of glittery eyed "get rich quick" people coming in, but you might loose a lot of real quality people, and worse, we might see even more of a shift towards really profitable female skimpy stuff, and fewer nitch or general use items.

That "hot female" trend seems to be worsening, after seeing the support for the latest mill kids, and even for the new EF figures. Just look at the flood for month's now of V4 characters and fantasy clothing sets, yet look at the dearth of releases for the EF Males, and the Daz Males n kids. yeah it;'s always been a tilted ratio, but legacy creators are having to get "money smart" and develop more for known moneymakers, and taking less risks on the notch characters out there.

That recent GG thread is s good example.. she COULD be a very well done figure, but she never even got a shot at being on enough people's radatr to be worth developing for,

Cripes! I'm long winded today!

Not buying Poser 7, not spending $499 when it doesn't support Lightwave.  not paying $499 for COLLADA export when Daz Studio has is for free if needed.  I don't use Daz Studio, but if I HAD to get something in COLLADA well there is a free solution for poser content.

I export out of poser as OBJ and import into Lightwave, it's free and works.  No auto rigging, animation hosting has proven it's self yet to me.  Poser4Pro Pack was okay for the time and I still have it around just in case.

Hosting has major limitations like collision detection for one.

Just seems rather silly to me so far and way to expensive for what is there in that chart.

doesn't matter, from what I know EF does what EF wants not what it's users want.

Oh and COLLADA for lightwave is near non existant.  Newtek said "working on it" for lightwave 9.X cycle but no known date.

.......

11/5/07

Poser 7 full version is about $250, and Poser Pro (which includes Poser 7) is about $500 ( it looks like this is for the 10 node version). We do not yet know what the side upgrade will cost (to the Base 3 node version), or if there will be a discounted upgrade to the full Pro Version. A discounted price for upgrade could take some of the sting out of the cost.

What is normal map support (as opposed to what I got in Poser 7)?

What is gamma correction for linear rendering?

LMK

yeah Mc, I've all but given up on lightwave development. I mainly use modeler, and love the surface baking and node setup they implimented, but they are just WAY to far behind the times in so many features.

I'm muddling my way through learning Modo now, slowly weaning myself off lightwave, but I'm still keeping it around, since it's my "bread  n butter" so to speak.

IMHO newtek's developement the last year or so wasn't much better then EF's. EF got features I really wanted in poser 7, but newtek really showed that rewriting the entire app from scratch does NOT decrease developement time, it creates a whole mess of new issues, limitations, and constant code rewrites.

I REALLY would love to wave flags supporting newtek and their developement, but when I look at Modod's modeler, 3d painting, and displacement painting, and I look at newtek's modeler almost unchanged for 6 years, I just can't.

It doesn't support Lightwave, its sure i pass....and i dont see anything that excite me to
pay $499...too bad.

Normal mapping is another approach  for adding more detail to a polygonal object without actually adding polygons; mostly it is game technology.  Displacement mapping seems to be much more popular and widely-used.  A big difference is that normal mapping can give the bump effect in x, y, and z directions (using all 3 color channels) while displacement mapping only effects one axis (+/- z) from the particular normal of the polygon the map is laid over.  Another big difference is normal mapping does not actually bring the surface of the normal up or down at render time, while displacement does; so shadows will tend to be more accurate with displacement mapping, and other caveats may apply.

...and what is  "illustration based texturing?"

I finally installed DS just for the COLLADA export to try it out to max, but then got distracted and never tested it very far. Agree that is a possible path to get assets into Max and others.

I also do not like the trend toward slut selling, like "school girl" outfits that are really just seductive cosplay. Those should be in Renderotica.

Besides direct .obj import and run, the best implementations of Poserdom assets -- including rigging --  live into more powerful apps appear to be Interposer/Cinema and Carrara/Runtime folder drag and drop (includes shaders.)

::::: Opera :::::

Normal mapping completely deforms a mesh, where as displament mapping just moves the mesh "in" and "out" from it's original shape.

Imagine trying ti make a pyramid into a ball with displacement mapping.. it couldn;t be done, however it COULD be done with normal mapping.

Gamma correction for linear rendering (I think) is kinda of like light balancing renders to each other.. take your digital camera, face towards the sun, and take a pic. Now turn 90 degreees right, and take a pic so parts of the images overlap.

Bring those into photoshop, and look at the overlapping areas.. one will be MUCH darker then the other. That because the overall exposure changed. gamma adjusting that second pic will bring it in close to the first pic, so they could be easily blended together.

I'm thinking we see the same effect when animations are rendered in poser ,and this adjusts it.

Course I could be clueless about it.. hehee!

Looks like Poser Pro is Poser 7 With import-export support to three or so main high end applications. I guess instead of buying poser+3 plugins, one would buy Poser Pro...
Looks like it's geared away from hobbyists, and towards thoise wanting a bit easier use a mix of poser content and high end applications.
I wonder how the rigging translations are being handled... I'll be a believer once I see it (Not holding my breath)

Normal mapping is a little plus... 
Can't say that I'm really dazzled :-

If Newtek isn't careful: Luxology might steal all of their customers.  As well as having taken the old Lightwave programmers.  But I wouldn't count LW out -- it's far too infused into the industry to just go away.

But I'm beginning to ask myself: why would you want to use Modeler when you've got Modo?

Quote - Imagine trying ti make a pyramid into a ball with displacement mapping.. it couldn;t be done, however it COULD be done with normal mapping.

I may be misunderstanding how it works, but I had thought that normal mapping does not show up at all at the edges of the object in profile, it's only a shading effect like Phong/smooth shading.  The examples I've seen look that way. 

re: illustration texturing, likely that is a low-color material set that is designed for toon rendering and making the edges pop out more cleanly than untextured, or phototextures.

So the only difference between the Base and full Pro version, if you already have P7, is a basic collada and the Max/maya/C4d support, which I would guess why it's called basic collada. 3 machine nodes instead of 10.

Now Machine nodes. Does that mean you can use 3 quades?

The side grade to the Base would have to be low priced. You get nothing with it except most of the new features. That is not much. It is more an upgrade plug for P7 that has all the missing stuff that the base does not have.

I'm not going to judge until it is final but I'm not thrilled with what I am seeing so far. I do want the 64bit.  But to be honest, I render in other apps more than Poser. So there is not much there to make me run out and get this. It may be different when all the facts are out. But I won't hold my breath on this one.

"a bit easier use a mix of poser content and high end applications.
I wonder how the rigging translations are being handled... I'll be a believer once I see it "

See what exactly??
The "hosting" will offer NO rigging translations
and be assured this "Poser pro 7 redux of the body studio redux of the old poser4 propack plugins

will be BROKEN by the first point release upgrade applied to MAX, Cinema et al.
and will EF keep up with the target apps??

Quote: ***" We will offer updates to the BodyStudio 2.6 and 2.7 plug-ins that will re-brand the product and remove the need for online activation. These updated versions will support the two latest releases of their host applications:

Autodesk 3ds Max 9 and 3ds Max 2008 Windows Only
Autodesk Maya 8.5 and 2008 Windows Only
Maxon CINEMA 4D R9.6 through R10.5 Windows Only

BodyStudio updates will be distributed at no charge. The updates will work with Poser Pro and Poser 7. Shortly after the release of Poser Pro we will cease distribution of these individual plug-ins and technical support for them will be limited to one year after the Poser Pro release date."*** :unQuote

..............Doubtful

Existing Max &Lightwave users Pin your wistful hopes on Colladda and be patient

Existing Cinema4D users on the great OSX and/or Windows: your Choice for poser integration has been made ABUNDANTLYclear.

Quote - yeah Mc, I've all but given up on lightwave development. I mainly use modeler, and love the surface baking and node setup they implimented, but they are just WAY to far behind the times in so many features.

I'm muddling my way through learning Modo now, slowly weaning myself off lightwave, but I'm still keeping it around, since it's my "bread  n butter" so to speak.

IMHO newtek's developement the last year or so wasn't much better then EF's. EF got features I really wanted in poser 7, but newtek really showed that rewriting the entire app from scratch does NOT decrease developement time, it creates a whole mess of new issues, limitations, and constant code rewrites.

I REALLY would love to wave flags supporting newtek and their developement, but when I look at Modod's modeler, 3d painting, and displacement painting, and I look at newtek's modeler almost unchanged for 6 years, I just can't.

Yeah all Newtek has been focused on 9.2 for the last year.  the new Nodal system in Lightwave 9.2+ is really nice but it's taken quite a bit of work.  Modeler updates are coming next couple of rounds but who knows when.

I've all but given up on Poser content IN lightwave other than exporting OBJ's and importing into lightwave for stills.

Daz's Carrara seemed promising however, well, Daz took it so it's pretty much dead to me now.

I have heard really good things about interposer for Cinima 4D but I don't want to invest antoher thousand dollars in Cinema 4D just to use Poser stuff in it, way over kill.

Sad that I've invested thousands of dollars to get "PRO" software and have so many limits, it's a real shame.

I just keep waiting.....and waiting....and drawing with paper and pencils (way easyer than 3d!).

love all the predictions on such scant information...

anyone of the ppl making predictions care to let me know next weeks lottery numbers?

I'm waiting till we actually SEE the software rather than making baseless predictions based on such minimal information....

Someone, please tell me that I read that PDF comparision chart wrong. 
For $499 (or whatever the upgrade cost is) I'm going to get a bit of low and medium content and the ability to "host" some other applications (none of which I own) ? :huh:
My PRIMARY 3D progam is POSER. I LIKE rendering in POSER.  I'm strange that way. :glare:
I am disappointed at this point. I was hoping for something else.

Quote - love all the predictions on such scant information...

anyone of the ppl making predictions care to let me know next weeks lottery numbers?

I'm waiting till we actually SEE the software rather than making baseless predictions based on such minimal information....

That's all true, and I've made that same point myself -- repeatedly.  However: we've now been provided with a bit more detail (thanks EF) -- and we can at least start to form the basis of a legitimate opinion based upon what that information tells us.

Now -- it's always possible (as I've already stated in this thread) that EF will yet surprise us.  I am hoping that they do.  Like by sticking the Lightwave support that looks like it might have gotten dropped somewhere between the initial announcement and this second announcement back in again.  Plus they might add other features between now and the final release.  We'll see.

So, yes: final judgement needs to await final release.  That's fair.  But if what we know now turns out to be all that there is -- then a significantly lower price for upgraders would be highly appropriate.

Who knows?  Perhaps I'll install it on my machine and love it.  We'll see.

"However: we've now been provided with a bit more detail (thanks EF) -- and we can at least start to form the basis of a legitimate opinion based upon what that information tells us."

Agreed and anyone who has used the old poser4propack or bodystudio+ LW,C4D or MAX plugins does not have to "predict" anything  to know that "scene hosting" is not a good work flow. and is extremely limited

No one is "predicting" a $499 USD price
EF has reported such.

NO one is "predicting" that there will be no new GI ,Vray,  etc. rendering engine
EF has not listed such on their official feature list.

Poser pro7 ,as reported by its makers so far, is a slightly tooled up version of poser7 using
that same old  Slow Firefly engine (but now with network render nodes woopie!!) and a warmed over recycled "hosting" plugins from the bygone days of the Poser4 propack
But for windows only and no Listed lightwave support.

"My PRIMARY 3D progam is POSER. I LIKE rendering in POSER.  I'm strange that way.I am disappointed at this point. I was hoping for something else."

You Could distribute your renders ever a series of networked computers
useful if you render alot of animation frames.

Quote - love all the predictions on such scant information...

I dunno, the feature comparison is very specific, not scant at all.  EF invites this kind of discussion anyhow - if they're sneaking GI into Poser Pro and not telling anyone, that'd pretty friggin stupid.

My interest is for 64 bits renderng since soon i will upgrade to Vista 64 bits (for more memory)  
But in pratical terms what does 64 bits rendering means?
 .........if Poser is not a 64 bits application
A more techy person than me can answer??

until it's out and in your hand, that is scant information.

why? they can remove or add anything right up to the moment they start downloads/CD pressing.

other than that... the PDF is a guide to what they are wanting in it as of making the PDF...  even the price is open to change.

How about they just fix Poser7....the crashes to desktop is driving me nuts. It's not perdictable so every move becomes a scarry adventure. I just wish they would fix the issues with what we have.... like maybe add error detection.... give me a break .....Poser Pro...what... better and faster crashes to the desk top..sigh.
Sorry I have nothing constructive to say but we have been suffering with bad programming since version 4.

***"until it's out and in your hand, that is scant information."

Marketing 101:
Boast about your latest feature and "innovations" up front and dont be coy.
you ever see Intel or AMD announce a new  "really fast" Chip
but refuse to tell buyers how many GHZ?
in a competitive market such as this, Playing "guess the specs"
will only send potential buyers and their $$Money$$ to other products who have openly stated what their options/features are.
And absent some major  copy editing  oversight there is no
logical marketing reason to Leave lightwave off the list of "hosting" appsor Not mention a new render engine besides firefly.
it is not wild speculation to discuss what EF has officially published
about this release.

"why? they can remove or add anything right up to the moment they start downloads/CD pressing."

Really?? you Mean they can promise Vray  rendering ,take our money and remove Vray Right before posting the download links??

"even the price is open to change."

So you care  away people into buying Carrara or interposer with a  phony high price and then run to them and say "no  just kidding we really meant $75 USD"