"you are talking about less than 2 seconds to "render" the viewport. Perhaps less! Add anti-alias and your frame render rate goes perhaps to 4-5 seconds."

do you have any examples of this..seem like a pretty basic way of rendering as your missing out on lighting & all the material effects,personaly I could never render like that,
I could render a preview like that..but with a preview I dont really care how the bumps look

the real time shadow display in max2008 coupled with dx shaders is indeed good,& that's the kind of real time effect that will aid me in creating images

if your into very speedy realtime rendering..have you looked into using game engines?using Cryengine I can render normal,displacement,sss,ambient occlusion,reflection,soft shadows etc..all in real time :)
the engine comes with the game Crysis & you can get it for less than the price of Poser

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