OK, here's something that goes along with what I was saying could be done -

"A new technology called "Grand Central" will make it easy for developers to create programs that take full advantage of the power of multi-core Macs. Also introduced is Open Compute Library (OpenCL), which extends the computing power of the GPU to any application written with OpenCL commands."

Now, this is just the first step. Over the next few years it will be multiple cores and CPUs over clock speed. So, the HIGH-END desktop computers will not only have full 64 bit support but have full blown open power of the cores and CPUs along with the OCL with more brute force graphics power than ever.

Shift ahead 5 years. We have NOW quad cores and multiple CPUs. My Mac has 2 quad core CPUs right now. Soon that will be an OCTO core with duel or quad CPUs. That would be 8 cores on at least 2-4 CPUs. Add to that at least 16-50GB of RAM and you have one heck of a brute force computer that can be realized in 5 or so years from now. 

So, I am just saying while some here are maintaining their point of Sub D being more efficient use there are certainly ways that may make it a moot point coming in a few years. No one I don't think is saying Sub D may not be more efficient at THIS time but it doesn't mean it will always be. As the technology grows, you can throw brute force at it and take the realism to a much higher level on home computers. You should in theory be able to use millions if not tens or hundreds of millions of polys in a scene with smooth and stable renders at an amazing speed. While we are not there yet, I am not sure that if you were to split a program like Poser into the the "mass market" and "high end" market you can't achieve the same or perhaps even better results doing it with brute force as some put it. Certainly the underlying technology will be there to do this. I'm not saying stay the course, but they certainly could and do both the Sub D version of Victoria and 200+ thousand high poly version then let the market decide which is better.

All I am saying is that while I understand the CURRENT trend of Sub D and it's uses I still say for true HUMAN realism you need more until I see some figure come out that is way better than anything now that blows V4 out of the water. How to do this 5 years from now may be a simple matter of preference and what the user has for their computer they design on rather than one method being better than the other.

Jeff

Development on: Mac Pro 2008, Duel-Boot OS - Snow Leopard 10.6.6 & Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit, 2 x 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon , 10GB 800 MHz DDR2 RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT.