Throwing more polygons at a more powerful CPU, but sticking with the old polygonal methodology in order to increase realsim is a brute force approach. High end does not equal brute force; high end equals multiple clever ways to achieve realism WITHOUT resorting to pure brute force. For example, I use both Vue 6 Infinite and Poser 7 Pro on the same hardware, and Vue 6 Infinite has no problem rendering scenes that have hundreds of billions of polys - in rendertime. Almost all those polys are procedurally generated terrains, rocks and plants - a CLEVER way to get realism. Poser starts to throw fits when I exceed 10 million polys, less than 0.1% of what Vue is capable of - ON THE SAME OS AND HARDWARE!

A higher end Poser should use SubD for human figures, it should support the ability to create HLSL shaders, it should support procedural geometry, 16 bit displacement/normal mapping, parallax mapping, light mapping, texture baking. A more modern approach to bones and skeletons would be highly appreciated - and again, weight mapping a 100k poly mesh is a royal pain, while weightmapping a 4k poly mesh is relatively easy. 

Poser High End should NOT rely on brute force and hi-poly meshes. An analogy would be mounting a massive 18th century steam engine in a modern car and saying you are on the same level, as a modern V6 turbo engine - after all, you have the same amount of hp to drive the car, don't you?

I also think that these features should not be reserved to an expensive high end version of Poser - it is base functionality.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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