Quote - Okay, did a search. Searched for "Kerkythea" AND "hair". I'm getting shoddy results:

.......... different sense about how it all works. Translucency and clip map are a new term for an old concept - and how they are used and how they relate to what Poser 7 uses is anyone's guess. 

In poser the transparency is masked by a greyscale image, so you get the benefits of built-in anti-aliasing where there is a smooth transition from black to white.
Clip mapping, on the other hand, uses a black and white image to mask out transparent areas and as such there is no anti-aliasing of the edges (a pixel is either black or it's white, there's no grey to smooth the jaggy edges in the masking image).

A renderer like modo allows you to use an image either as a 'transparency amount' mask (looks smoother on things like close-up hair) or as a clip map (faster on things like distant leaves where you don't notice the jaggies).

Not sure if Kerky allows you both options but if you put in a feature request you'll find Giannis to be very obliging.

A big advantage of clip mapping is that you don't get unwanted shine or reflections on the parts of the mesh which are supposed to be invisible. In modo if you use the greyscale image for 'transparency amount', you also have to use it again for 'specular amount' and 'reflection amount' to kill the shine on the clear bits. With clip maps that's handled automatically.