Quote - >> Because, quite simply, a list of vectors are pretty freakin' easy to carry forward.

Well, duh, Tom: that's the point. The backwards compatability is there because the essentials have not changed. Adobe figured that out; why havent you?

You missed a bit, but I'll fix it for you: the essentials have not changed in that particular context.

I'll be honest, Sean: You're in way over your head if you think you're going to argue that all programs should have backwards compatibility as its prime objective, to the exclusion of all other objectives.

Why? Well, I'll point a few bits:

• Moore's Law is not eternal, and as the likes of Microsoft and Adobe are rapidly finding out, it won't bail them out when their next edition of bloatware issues forth. (I forgot to mention that Adobe has quite a reputation for writing bloatware - see also Acrobat (and Reader), FrameMaker...).

• You wanna open a P1 file? Then install Poser 1 or 2, either on your current machine (if the OS can run it), or in a virtual machine (VMWare and Xen both make free --as in $0.00-- virtual servers that you can park on your computer, and the VMWare one is drop-easy to use).

IOW: Don't expect the rest of us to continue to party like it's 1999, please.

Quote - As I noted earlier, over at DAZ, there's a couple of threads with people having a grand old time with the "ancient" P3 centaur, taking that old model and sprucing it up. If we didnt have this awful, terrible "backwards compatability"... why, those folks would just be laughed right out of Dodge.

...so what's stopping you from installing/keeping a version of Poser that allows that, or at least using that version to 'carry the flame' and convert your old goodies into goodies that work in newer versions?

Now here's the real funny part - I use "old" crap every day. /bin/bash has worked just fine and essentially unchanged since the days when Poser itself was just a dream. I also have no kick against elegant software that performs useful function no matter how old it may be. But then, I primarily use an environment that encourages elegant and un-killable software that Just Works - it's called Linux. OSX has that concept (on occasion) too.

Even funnier - I'm only providing (explained as layman-like as possible) the technical reasons why backwards compatibility is not always possible for an app. Argue against them all you like, but I do this stuff for a living, and I gotta tell you: General Ludd isn't exactly a benevolent or intelligent leader for you to be following, y'know?

Quote - But , see, funny thing is, so far, no one's given any kind of solid reason to completely rewrite the geometry-based system we've used quite well, all across the myriad forms of 3D software, for a decade now. It's one of those things like vectors that just seems to work rather well, for whatever reason.

That's great for vectors. Now tell me why we should continue to have to push polycounts through the stratosphere just to get a figure to bend halfway decently, when there are newer and more useful figure-building means out there that can cut those down by orders of magnitude. Then maybe you can tell us why our only current choices for clothing involve conformers (which are time-consuming to build, morph, and rig correctly), or dynamics (which require a ton of patience while my CPUs go on an ADHD episode just to calculate how it should hang a bit of cloth).

I'd also like to see someone push Poser-weight geometries off of the CPU and onto the GPU, which --if it can be done-- can push render times to only a fraction of what we deal with now. This would likely require a lot of re-thinking about how the data is presented to the app.

While yes, you have a grand old time using what's there, I'm willing to bet cash money that animators would happily kill an infant to implement even one of the bits that I just mentioned. The reason is simple - while you're dealing with only one frame to post-work, animators would have to do that at least 24 times over for just one second of footage.

Quote - Now, having said that, if you - or MikeJ, who wants to burden Poser with a bunch of tools that would put the price point outside the range of 90+% of the users...

You (IMHO rather ignorantly) assume that this is all an either/or proposition. The existence of a high-end Poser-like tool does not preclude the existence of a standard Poser-like tool. Carrara didn't wipe out DAZ|Studio, and the presence of Microsoft SQL Server didn't destroy MS Access.

Quote - Sad thing for you three is, that's just not the usual Poser user. And maybe it is time for you three to move on to a higher, more elevated, more sanguine piece of software so you wont feel burdened by the limitations of this sad, restraining little software that forces you to use tools like, like... well, I dont know what exactly, but it has to be something.

Over in DAZ-land, this is already happening - folks can start out w/ D|S, and when they want something higher-up, they can move to Carrara, then Carrara Pro. Then they can start getting tools that can export to FBX, and push the results of that into 3DS/LW/Maya-land.

Meanwhile, Poser is... err, Poser. Without export tools, it's pretty much stuck where it is. Maybe it is time for the Poser code-jockeys to start thinking about a continuum of elevation, where an entry-level Poser tool can smoothly take a user to higher levels.

/P