Quote - Yawn.
Sorry, but unless someone can show me an alternative that let's me "pose" realistic (as in PHOTO-realistic) 3d humans, I see no reason for any "doom & gloom" at all.

D|S is a complete non-issue regardless what new gimmicks they might introduce as long as their rigging is still on Poser 4 level.

Give me 3d humans that look and bend like real humans. (Like Poser 7 and PRO can)
Give me an easy way to create my own morphs. (Like Poser magnets and the MorphBrush can)
Give me a way to modify/do my own rigging. (Like the Poser SetUp room can)
Give me an "open" format I can experiment with. (Like Posers cr2 which I can edit with notepad)
Give me years of 3rd party support. (Like all the helper apps and python scripts folks made for Poser)

Give me ALL THAT and MORE and make it BETTER, CHEAPER, FASTER and MORE CONVENIENT to use than Poser, so that I have a reason to dump eight years of learning/using/experimenting with Poser and spending more of my valuable time learning a new program from the ground up, and then I MIGHT give this issue more than a passing glance.

Poser is far from perfect, and I welcome any attempt to improve it, but as the saying goes:

Those who can, do.
Those who can't, talk trash on the internet.

Well, you've made some pretty big assumptions assuming that I cannot "do" preciesly that.  I won't bother giving you my bonafide's, it's doubtful you'd believe them anyway, but suffice to say that as a programming project is concerned, Poser's internal mechanics are really not that difficult to duplicate or improve upon given the current level of api's available. 

Plenty of programs offer human posable figures as realistic if not moreso than Poser, in higher end packages.  Current open source API's available for even Java and C++ would make it possible, with a bit of coding, to duplicate all of Posers morphing technology and then some using open source libraries like opengl.

As to "open format", personally I think Poser's CR2 format is far to cryptic, in fact a lot of "features" in the CR2 file remain undocumented to this day.  if it were me I'd probably use something more along the lines XML format, so that editing and reading would be a snap and you'd have a wide variety of options available to you as far as readers and editors were concerned.

As to third party support, it wouldn't be difficult at all to build most of the functionality of what's currently available for Poser as far as scripts are concerned into the program itself.  These scripts exist because Poser either lacks features or the interface for said features is difficult or time consuming to use.  As a result 3rd party programmers had to add in functionality using the embedded python to make up for these difficult to use areas.  Also embedding python into a C++ application isn't particularly difficult, so you could make python scripting available for the new program as well.  Rigging is one area in which Poser in particular needs a great deal of help, the current rigging interface is clunky at best.

Most of the 3rd party support for Poser is in the actual figures/props/etc that people have created for it over the years, but again if you can teach your program how to read poser file formats you could easily integrate all of this great content and make it available for your program as well.

But of course the whole point of this is that Poser has survived because it had a niche in the market place, a niche that it's current developers have more or less abandoned.  You might notice that I mentioned more than once that I use and like Poser myself, but it's current state of development is not my primary area of concern.

It is future development that has me worried - in as much as I don't see much future in Smith Micro continuing to develop Poser and trying to market it at such outlandish prices.  That's not "doom and gloom", that is common sense.  I'm not a graphics Pro, and if I'm going to have to pay "pro" prices then why would I ever bother to upgrade from the version 7 I have now? 

It would make more sense for me to skip future Poser upgrades and purchase a much higher end program that can actually render well instead of continuing to dump huge amounts of money into Smith Micro's pocket for minor bug fixes and features that do me no earthly good.  If
I don't own 3ds max or Maya (and I don't) then all the integration in the world isn't worth squat to me.  I think most other hobbiests would agree.  But Smith Micro really doesn't care about our business anymore, they are after graphics pros now - a market that by and large looks at Poser with scorn, considering it a hobbiest app.  It's just bad marketing no matter how you slice it.

So you can ignore the facts, if you wish, but the truth is that if SM continues down it's current path, Poser development will eventually cease entirely.  Either way they've opened the door for other apps to take over the market they have abandoned.  That's nothing against the Poser application mind you, just a realistic analysis of the current situation regarding it's development.  I'm not knocking Poser or saying it's a bad app, I'm just saying that there are areas of Poser that need additional development badly and those are areas that have been ignored since version 6. 

So please, feel free to remove yourself from the cross, I'm sure somebody needs the wood. 

-Never fear, RenderDog is near!  Oh wait, is that a chew toy?  Yup. ok, nevermind.. go back to fearing...