Quote - One reason you don't see as much crap coming from the high-end apps, is that what you see is highly filtered, either by moderators or by public, humiliating abuse of those who post less than stellar work so that most don't try. There are plenty of crappy models and renders being made from top-end applications, there just isn't anywhere welcoming to those of lesser abilities in that tier to post them

I agree but IMO this can be both a good and bad thing. While you're right that it does lead to improved quality, it also tends to scare away less aggressive artists or those that aren't working in what would be called a 'traditional' CG medium. eg take a look at the fractal section of our gallery here... It's full of interesting even brilliant work, but none of the 'high end' forums out there would give it the time of day. In this at least, they're all the same as poser galleries, ie they worship at the altar of 'nekkid asian/elf chick with a sword', 'generic archi render' and 'hyperdetailed orc with axe' style images. The quality may be high but the themes are right down there with our NVIATWAS.

Quote - If the owners of Poser would have done the same as E-On, they would have grown huge, but the didn't keep the distance they should have (they even turned up at some porn industry related shows) and they've paid deerly for it. Now they desperately try to climb out of the pit they've dug themselves, but most likely they will never succeed.

On the contrary they should have pulled up their sleeves and started digging. The primary market for poser and associated content has always been people who like to render beautiful CG people in various stages of undress. There is no point in trying to distance yourself from your primary market, instead you should embrace it without shame. If your userbase wants to render nekkid people, make it easier and cooler for them to do so. Give them realistic skin, skin deformation, realistic jiggle and gravity, easier ways for characters to interact, easier ways to 'animate' their favorite characters. Add basic behaviorial AI so that users can interact with their virtual dolls, add speech synthesis so they can hear them talk... and so on. That's the poser goldmine right there.

Going after 'pros' who won't give Poser the time of day no matter what they add is not a good idea. People using MAX, Maya, XSI et al (i mean really using it and not just using it to render poser stuff) are not suddenly going to care about poser even if has a few plugins to host stuff in them.