We've created a Poser User Survey to get your feedback on how you use Poser and which features are important to you. Your answers will help guide where Poser is headed in the future. The survey should only take you a few minutes to complete.

http://www.contentparadise.com/phpQ/fillsurvey.php?sid=66

Thank you for participating!

Steve Cooper
Poser Product Manager

There are already many ideas and suggestions here on the forum
I'm sure everyone will be very happy to take this survey if it is for a better poser :biggrin:

Hi Steve

You're welcome, and thank you for taking the time to solicit our opinions.

 There wasn't a text field to enter comments so here goes:

• the current documentation is incomplete in that it technically explains what the controls are but offers no insight on how to make use of them. Said another way, it is not user friendly.

• Not everyone renders stills, so animation support and reasonably short render times (within Firefly's limitation) is always welcome.

• more rigging options; i.e. the ability to create custom rigs (possibly not based on spherical falloff) with custom controls, handles, attributes, more efficient IK, IK/FK switches, IK splines, "secondary animation" deformers, matrix or "patch bay-like" ability to connect attributes, so on

• Some would ask for GI, but it seems very impractical at its current state of development.

• lower res figures (<=4K polys) + rendertime subD smoothing.

Thanks for the survey, Steve!  (Btw, I'm going to make this a sticky.  Please let us know when the survey is over  :).)

Jeni

Quote - Thanks for the survey, Steve!  (Btw, I'm going to make this a sticky.  Please let us know when the survey is over  :).)

Jeni

That'd be a great help! I'll keep you posted on dates.

Adding to Replicand's comments:

It would be really helpful for animation if everything could be changed
'on the fly', with keyframed switches.  Switch parenting, change from
one camera to another, switch IK on and off.   Having to start a new
PZ3 at these points is a big obstacle to animation.

Also, the animation keygraph has needed renovation for a long time.
It needs to be re-planned along with a better Layering system.

WEIGHT MAPPING please.

I said no on question 49 and it still wanted me to answer question 50.  53 is kind of personal so I had to lie because there wasn't a prefer not to answer statement.  There was also no way to leave written feedback.

Someone really needs to explain to the people that designed and managed that survey how they are supposed to be created and that people should be allowed to opt out of demographic questions...   Does it really matter in the great scheme of things if I have an XX or XY chromosome if poser really needs the rigging system for figures to be improved or the lighting needs a ton of work?

I would have asked for access to the Materials Tab on the library without having to go to the material room to apply materials on the fly.

Long time no see Steve, you & the family keeping well?

Hey Steve if you need some help to translate this survey to Brazilian Portuguese just let me know.
I also posted in my brazilian forum too.

I also objected to the demographics questions. Those should at the very least be optional. So, I lied about them all.

I also have a problem with 42/43, namely "how important is it that the poser human figures look attractive/look normal."  This panders to the "Default Junkies."    I have railed against them a few times. They have these stupendous opinions/judgements about the default appearance of the model and take up oxygen on the planet arguing as zealots one way or another about this or that model's value based on the default , which tends to muck up discussions of how to 'get the most' out of a given model.

You asked a question or two about modifying the default as well, it should be noted.

Since no place for comments, here are mine.

1. The hair room could be great. The biggest failure is jitter with collision on. No matter what settings you use, whether you use a low-poly proxy or not, you cannot stop the hair from bouncing around. So even if I get sim time down by colliding against a lowPoly proxy, that only solves half my problem, because there is jitter. This one issue prevents the hair room from being 'nearly pro.'

2. Animation controls have not improved in a long time.
        -- at least put tangents on the graphs. if you want to see a good simple implementation, check out Carrara. You can make a left or right independent tangent, or tandem. You can grab the handle of the tangent and pull it shorter/longer, as well as of course up and down. This is the great way to control the shape of a spline.

   -- let me see more than one graph in a window. at the very least let me see all six translation/rotation lines on one graph. I ought to be able to make graphGroups where I pick up to 6 (or so) actors and have a trigger to open the graph lines on every actor in that group.

 -- trigger graph from paramenter wheel with a double click. double click (or some other quick trigger) should open the graph of that actor or the GraphGroup with that actor in it.

-- how about a translate/rotate remote pad as in other apps? this is not for morphs. you see a 'cartoonish' representative of the model with little pads at the animateable joints in a floating UI window. Instead of using direct manipulation and it's attendant selection frustrations, or dial spinning with it's scroll/grab/changeactor issues, you instead put he mouse pointer on the pad and trigger either translation or rotation by moving the mouse on/with the pad.

1. You had a question in there about subdivision. I'd like to see selective (painted?) subdivision in the MorphBrushTool. You are working along on the face and want to sculpt fine ridges on the brow. Currently you are limited to the mesh that is there, of course. But if you could elect to subdivide a small, targeted area in order to deform it with TheBrush, that would be splendid. You should be able to elect/control a second or third or fourth level etc. of subdivision on the area, as well, not just one level. My vision is the 17K poly V4 with a few hundred thousand polys added on the face. (small exaggeration to make my point)

Thanks for asking us, I hope our suggestions are considered seriously.

::::: Opera :::::

Survey completed.

One thing I thought was inordinately funny is the question about which Poser online forums does one belong to. One of the choices was CG Society. (Which should have said "CG Talk", since that's the actual forum).

But... there is no Poser forum at CG Talk, and I very seriously doubt there ever will be one. ;-)

Having said that, I can think of at least a few other things about Poser which need to be changed but weren't on that list.

• The initial, factory-installed opening default scene should have NOTHING in it. No Simon, No Sydney, no Peter, Paul or Mary - nothing at all.
• There should be a global control for overall light intensity.
• The cameras should have the ability to revolve around a selection.
• The "point at" cameras, e.g., Face and Hand and Pose cameras should be as fast as the Main Camera, and should not be slowed down just because IK is on.
• Poser needs to have the same kind of multi-thead rendering performance other "pro" apps have. That is, all 2,4,8.... cores are used in rendering. Not two for the top and two for the bottom and then drop out after their task is completed - all cores should assist in all parts of the render.
  *Poser ought to have its own color picker. The current one sucks ass. A Mac or Photoshop type color picker would be ideal.

That's just what I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there's plenty more...

Quote -
I also objected to the demographics questions. Those should at the very least be optional. So, I lied about them all.

Heh.. me too. ;-)

Selective subdivision would very much be welcome.  To use one example, when I did that headmorph for my lekku freebie, the reason the tentacles don't match up very well with the head morph is that there just aren't enough polygons at the back of the head (for just about all of the available human figures) to push around to meaks a nice, clean transition.  Now, probably 99% of the time it doesn't matter, but for the few times it does, it would be nice to be able to selectively increase the resolution of the area you need witout having to bump up the res for the rest of the body.

Quote -

Quote -
I also objected to the demographics questions. Those should at the very least be optional. So, I lied about them all.

Heh.. me too. ;-)

You mean I wasn't the only 75 year old woman making over a million dollars a year to fill out the survey?  I'm shocked.

the survey is anonymous so why people "lied" on the demographic questions is beyond me,
even these factors represented fairly accurately all contribute to an improvement of our beloved software i'm sure steve would agree.
in the what forums question they could have put renderotica(oh no is someone offended now?)

Quote - the survey is anonymous so why people "lied" on the demographic questions is beyond me ...

Anybody who stays logged into CP would send the relevent cookies when accessing the survey pages.
Also they could match up IP addresses to CP users if they wanted to.

Rendering speed for a 32 bit system need to be looked at. Poser needs to render faster on 32 bit systems. If other similar applications can do it, why can't Poser.

And, the amount of content that can be placed in a scene. Poser is limited on this also.

 Poser is so well loved but is frustrating to use due to system instability and a perceived sense of dis-integrated modularity.

Oh a list...lol

Better 64 bit and multiple thread support,not just in rendering (which still needs sorting)
Better lights(including radiosity and GI)
Better and faster preview window
No more memory issues
better rigged figures and bone system
Better hair system
Better and faster render system
updated and fixed(where needed) materials and nodes
physics (for all us who like animation)
as mentioned in this thread, an updated animation system
Get rid of the content tab(or whatever its called, who shops inside poser???? really)
i would add more but that lot has exhausted me,lol......

There are a few improvements that the survey didn't cover:

• Fix the reversed normals issue. It wasn't a problem in Poser 4. It's frustrating that the problem remains three versions after creating it.
• Realistic lights. It's frustrating having lights that don't act like real lights. I've had times where adding a light darkens an image and when moving lights had the opposite of the intended effect.
• Better selecting. I've never understood why I can click on something large in the foreground and wind up selecting a small object, that cannot be seen, in the background.

Quote - they could match up IP addresses to CP users if they wanted to.

We are only be using the IP addresses to remove duplicate submissions from a few overly enthusiastic respondents.

Your honest answers in the demographics area are extremely helpful to the future of Poser.

Thank you!

Quote - We are only be using the IP addresses to remove duplicate submissions from a few overly enthusiastic respondents.

This is as I would expect.

Quote - Your honest answers in the demographics area are extremely helpful to the future of Poser.

You really have no way of knowing what answers to these questions is valid, meaning you'll have to arbitrarily filter out what you think is obviously invalid, which makes asking them in the first place pointless as you're imposing a bias that you have no way to verify.

If that weren't enough, the fact that exchange rates are varying means that your data can only be valid for US respondents if you were able to seperate them from those from the rest of the world.

Making them optional would have made the data collected much more useful, as it's much more likely that anybody answering would then be being truthful.

nruddock is right.

For myself, I am not worried that the survey will break my privacy or whatever.

Here is my contention,

1. when you don't ask for proactive agreement on the demographics, it just gets the back up of most independent people. Its as if you have no respect for the person's person; you only want to "harvest" them.

2. this approach gives me the impression the survey is being done for MARKETING, not for features the program needs.

::::: Opera :::::

The results so far are very informative. And the demographic data helps us view the results based upon generalized groups of users. The greater the number of unique responses we receive, the better, statistically, the data becomes. And the better the data, the better the window into what our users want.

It's useful to see how differently men versus women answer, how non-forum versus casual forum versus active forum members answer, and even segmenting out by age and income brackets (converting from EU or Pound to USD is easy) produces different commonalities in the results. The information we're collecting will absolutely be used to determine how useful users perceive various features to be. This will help us in the development process.

Thank you to everyone that has participated! If you haven't had a chance to fill out survey, it is still active if you're interested.

Cheers!

Cooper

One of the things that is difficult in Poser is aiming spotlights and determining light area and light falloff. It would be nice if you could aim a spotlight by having a view from the light, as if the light were a camera. Second, a visual representation of the lights "cone of influence", and a visual representation of min/max falloff that would change as falloff values change.

Having the visible "bar" to show rendering progress is nice, but when rendering an image larger than the preview window, you can't see the progress of the entire image since the image in the preview window is "locked" until the render completes. I'd like to be able to "move" the preview area around the image area during rendering so the rendering progress of the entire image can be monitored.

Thanks for taking the time to survey users. It's nice to see there is an interest in our point of view when it comes to future versions.

tainted.

the feature you asked for already exists. it is called the "Shadow Camera" and there is one for each spotlight. Search on the term here in Rendo and/or look it up in the Poser docs. You can look right thru the light and see what it will illuminate.

Another trick I have is to make the spotlight one color like "red" and turn intensity up to 5000. I guarantee you will see where the spot touches. You then just turn it down and to white before render.

::::: Opera :::::

Cooper - will you be publishing the results?

I'd be interested to see how your survery matchs the academic research a few of us did last year. 

Quote -
And the better the data, the better the window into what our users want.

Then why don't you just ask the users directly what we want?
I too was thinking "marketing" through much of the filling out of that survey. The questions were rated on levels of importance, but the questions were the questions you Poser guys were asking.

Do I think it's important that Poser have a more traditional interface?
What does that mean? I guess it means you're considering changing the interface, possibly after a decade of reading complaints about it? But that depends on if you perceive through this survey that the users who filled it out think so? And I guess that could be applied to all the questions.

Why was there no empty form where we could list things we would like to see? You've commented a few times to comments people have made regarding the survey, but have not commented at all to the number of intelligent suggestions made just right here in this post, if even just to say "thank you for the suggestions."

I would have felt better about it - felt more like it was a sincere gesture if there had been a space to put suggestions.

Or, you could just do like Autodesk does and tells us all to fork off and deal with whatever we get. ;-)

Quote - > Quote -

And the better the data, the better the window into what our users want.

Then why don't you just ask the users directly what we want?
I too was thinking "marketing" through much of the filling out of that survey. The questions were rated on levels of importance, but the questions were the questions you Poser guys were asking.

Do I think it's important that Poser have a more traditional interface?
What does that mean? I guess it means you're considering changing the interface, possibly after a decade of reading complaints about it? But that depends on if you perceive through this survey that the users who filled it out think so? And I guess that could be applied to all the questions.

Why was there no empty form where we could list things we would like to see? You've commented a few times to comments people have made regarding the survey, but have not commented at all to the number of intelligent suggestions made just right here in this post, if even just to say "thank you for the suggestions."

I would have felt better about it - felt more like it was a sincere gesture if there had been a space to put suggestions.

Or, you could just do like Autodesk does and tells us all to fork off and deal with whatever we get. ;-)

Sorry I can't engage on any potential feature discussion. It's too competitve a landscape to reveal ones hand. As for the survey questions? They are presented in a classic Likert Scale which allows for us to debate internally at great length the meaning of each.

There are many staffers with a long history of working with Poser and this community that are reading through the various threads, thinking about the many suggestions, figuring out what can or can-not be delivered. And the survey complements that knowledge base with a more statistical way to look at everyone's global perspective on Poser.

Quote -
...Or, you could just do like Autodesk does and tells us all to fork off and deal with whatever we get. 

From my experience, Autodesk excels on integrating useful features.  Their Bonus Tools (which are often written by users) tend to appear as new, fully supported features of future releases.

 I believe that the inability to enter text may've been a serious shortcoming in the survey but I don't understand why people got bent out of shape by the demographics questions. I personally (a) don't believe that anyone's identity was compromised and (b) am fully cognizant that such questions are fundamental to the way new products such as cars, computers, underware and toothbrushes are marketed towards our rational and emotional beings. Really, a better product with awesome features sells better, period. What's the harm in that?

"such questions are fundamental to the way new products such as cars, computers, underware and toothbrushes are marketed towards our rational and emotional beings"

Just because it "is" done that way does not mean it "should" be done that way.

when you see a survey combining feature requests with demographics, it does not take too much math to figure out that the marketing department will tell the development team to implement the features that the 'target demographic for optimal sales'' wants. That is the ONLY reason to combine feature requests with demographic information.

I don't know about you, but  putting my requests down but indicating my true demograhics, which I know to be not exactly in the marketing departments sweet spot, is nuts.

MikeJ you made good points. Agree.

::::: Opera :::::

Quote -
From my experience, Autodesk excels on integrating useful features.  Their Bonus Tools (which are often written by users) tend to appear as new, fully supported features of future releases.

Yes, I know. I was only kidding.  :-)
But what I meant was you don't see them pretending to take requests then not deliver. And you also don't see them releasing the same thing year after year with only minor changes to the same theme.

Quote -

Sorry I can't engage on any potential feature discussion. It's too competitve a landscape to reveal ones hand

While I can understand you not wanting to discuss features or plans, I don't think that's correct reasoning for not doing so. Poser has no competition, really. No program does what it does and does it so quickly and so well. maybe DAZ Studio, but that's a free program - they're gonna be competition no matter what as long as the price is zero.

But aside from that, the "biggies" in the 3D world announce what they're up to. We know what cool new features the next version of 3ds max, maya, Lightwave, Vue, etc. is going to have, well ahead of time. Mudbox is attempting to overtake ZBrush right now and seems to be having good success at it, and Autodesk was making people aware of what was on the horizon for quite a bit ahead of time.
If anything, it's those complete 3D packages which have real competition to worry about. Somehow I can't see the makers of Quidam saying to themselves one day, "Look, SM is gonna put real functionality into Poser - quick call in the programmers!". ;-)

Actually I wish Poser had more real competition than it does. I wish it  didn't have this hobbyist stigma attached to it and y'all were more concerned with making it actually compete in The Big Market. It could be so much more if you had that competition and desire to see it through to what it could be.

I'll tell you another thing I would like to  see, FWIW. I'd like to see a $1500.00 Poser which can stand on its own and not need badly-implemented plugins just to get it into more capable apps.

I would pay the upgrade price to get to a $1500 Poser.

Maybe Poser and Modo could get married. Then you'd have the modeling and the spectacular render engine. And then it would have character animation and read the Runtime folder. You could let the new ModoFurEngine grow up to be great dynamic hair, kick up the power of the Poser cloth, but the animation tools....the animation tools have to get better.

The name? Wouldn't it have to be Pomodoro?

::::: Opera :::::

Quote - Just because it "is" done that way does not mean it "should" be done that way.

when you see a survey combining feature requests with demographics, it does not take too much math to figure out that the marketing department will tell the development team to implement the features that the 'target demographic for optimal sales'' wants. That is the ONLY reason to combine feature requests with demographic information.

I'm not trying to be antagonistic but I see this as a healthy debtate. That said, what way do you propose that this information should be obtained?  In writing (and in marketing I can suppose since I've never studied it) one must know one's audience.

Honestly, do you really expect for the development team to focus on one person's desire to implement a "spot-light target null object" (which coincidentally isn't a bad idea) when so many others are vying for GI implementation, as an example? I mean, that is the whole purpose of the survey, no? And really it's an insignificant thing in contrast to the fact that certain, common keywords spoken over the telephone can get one landed in jail as a terrorist (in the US).

So, how would you propose they get the information they're requesting without infringing on your alleged "consumer rights"?

Quote - I would pay the upgrade price to get to a $1500 Poser.

Yeah, same here.

I know we've had this conversation before. Just to clarify though, for others who might see this, having some kind of "Super Poser" doesn't negate the fact there should still be a "regular Poser", for those who desire it as it is, or don't want all the bells and whistles.

E-on does it, Autodesk does it with Maya, and many apps have their stripped-down versions alongside their advanced versions. Seems like a good idea to me.

Yes, the other levels of Poser could continue on their merry way.

=================
replicand

I did not claim my rights were infringed. I don't mind contention, but please do not totalize. I also did not ask for "only my single wishlist" to somhow gain ascendancy over others! What I did object to was being shoehorned by the combination of demographics and feature request.

the answer to the last question you put: "...how would you propose they get the information they're requesting..." is that

a) i don't support them getting the information they requested, namely marketing demographics combined with feature importance ratings. That's why I lied, to not give them that. I could have also simply not answered the survey.

b) they could have simply asked for the ratings of the features. That would be 'interesting' but pretty rigid, since only the features they preselected as candidates would be discussed, and the syntax and slant of the questions are under the power of the person asking.

c) they could have asked for the ratings of the features, but also included a freeform text box for the creative community to unload. The fact that such an obvious opportunity as not offered is suspicous of them not "really" wanting the messy, scattered lists of the wild poser community.

::::: Opera :::::

 Again, none of this is meant as a personal attack. I haven't interpreted this as "your desires over the community's" but made my statement as a pseudo-statistic example.

As far as I can see, the questions asked at the survey (and the lack of a text field) says that while the developers are interested to gauge the climate of the community's feature requests, the only possible new change in Poser 8 would be an interface change. Otherwise Poser will remain tremendously stagnant and fall farther behind other mid-priced apps that are less specialized. A shame.

Users will continue seek other ways to host Poser content in more robust apps, Poser will get sold to yet another company who will fail to recognize that adding more fluff is no substitute for creating a solid core.

Well, you might be right!

I hope not.

As far as I know, very few people asked for output to openEXR format. Yet that one feature has revived Poser for me as a great app. I hope Poser8 rocks.

:::::: Opera :::::

Quote - > Quote - Then why don't you just ask the users directly what we want?

Sorry I can't engage on any potential feature discussion. It's too competitve a landscape to reveal ones hand.

I have to laugh at this! I'm sorry.

Just a thought....guys, can we stop bustin' the guy's chops?  He's doing his job.  I'm pretty sure he didn't write the survey, and we need to remember that Smith Micro IS a company, probably with a marketing department.  Just because the userbase is a community doesn't mean that the company that creates it is going to treat the userbase like family.  PSP has a community of users.  I doubt Corel is clammoring to hear every single thing the userbase wants to say.  The fact is, the survey is meant to see what the userbase AS A WHOLE wants, not just what the vocal minority wants. 

Anyway, guys, if you're REALLY that bent out of shape about whatever you think is missing/was unnecessary/gets your goat right this moment, why don't you write into Smith Micro's customer service? 

Hi JenX

I agree with you.  Guys lighten up or it's clobberin' time.

Cheers

Pat

Nobody's got my goats! They're in the shed out back! I filled out the survey just fine and din't cheat. I just find corporate double speak to be hilarious.

Quote - Nobody's got my goats! They're in the shed out back! I filled out the survey just fine and din't cheat. I just find corporate double speak to be hilarious.

Yeah, and telling him that it's laughable that he's not at liberty to share what they're deciding in the business room is kinda rude.  Let the man do his job, and let's work WITH him to make Poser better, not against him.   You guys wonder why corporate types never take us seriously...well, with threads like this, I wouldn't, either.

I'm not the one busting his chops about the survey here Jen. I just found his remark about the competative landscape being the reason they can't discuss their plans to be laughable. If he had just said he wasn't at liberty to discuss it. I wouldn't have said a peep. But the excuse was just not believable. Sorry if I find that humourous.

Well, the 3D business, regardless of what the program is used for, is a VERY competitive business.  Heck, even content creation is competitive.  Think about it...how often do you see top sellers in the forums giving tutorials for how they do what they do?  Business stays good when you do what you're best at, and don't market what you're doing before you can deliver.  I know a couple companies (no, not mentioning names) that constantly market what they're up to, and promise it months BEFORE they can deliver.  That's not good business sense, either.  So, if they were, let's say, throwing around the idea of adding the ability to swap heads at the click of a mouse...but nowhere near even finishing the logistics of it...mentioning it here would be tantamount to promising it, and they'd never hear the end of it. 

Coop's doing a heck of a job staying straight and fielding blows, but he shouldn't have to.  You want to give feedback on your program?  Tell them directly :)  Steve's just the messenger.  Don't shoot 'im. 

I'm going to bed now.  Please be nice overnight, LOL.

I was wondering if you could help me on something.  You see,  I had an accident with Poser today,  since then everytime I try and access my runtime I get this message...Which button should I choose?

I wasn't busting anyone's chops, and I don't think anyone here said anything unreasonable.
Besides, if S-M sends someone in under the guise of "family", they should expect to get a "family" response, no?

What if, instead of making the responses we did, we had put on some sickening fanboy display....
"Yeah, way to go Steve!"
"WOOHOO, u guyz ROCK!"
"Best survey ever!"
"Smith Micro is sooo kewl!"

Would you have felt the need to try to put an end to that, Jen? :-)

Quote - Well, the 3D business, regardless of what the program is used for, is a VERY competitive business.  Heck, even content creation is competitive.  

Business stays good when you do what you're best at, and don't market what you're doing before you can deliver.  I know a couple companies (no, not mentioning names) that constantly market what they're up to, and promise it months BEFORE they can deliver.  That's not good business sense, either. 

Jen, this is Poser we're talking about here. You know, the program which has been shuffled from one company to another and offloaded again as soon as the money or the love ran out...
Somehow I've never been able to equate Poser with Good Business Sense. Every company which has owned it has taken what could have been an AMAZING program and sold it short to keep it the hobbyist niche app it is.  And then just plain sold it.
The result has been that instead of it being on a par with 3ds max, XSI and maya (which it COULD HAVE BEEN), it is something of a laughing stock among the professional 3D artists in the industry.

What did Smith-Micro pay for it? Seven million, right? It should have been ten times that amount, and it might have been if it weren't for the fact that it seems to be barely hanging in there. Poser is the 3D world's dark little secret - some Pros use it, but will rarely admit to it; you can barely mention Poser at places like CG Talk without getting laughed out of the place.
Why is this? Like I said, because they have always played it safe and appealed to the hobbyists. Even their marketing positively SCREAMS "Hobbyist!". All that talk about all the ready-made content and all, and even a ridiculous tab within the program to get online to buy stuff - the entire core of Poser has been built around the idea of using other people's stuff, and very little attention has been paid towards using it as either a professional production tool or a content creation tool. Its animation tools, for example, though workable, are a joke. I could eventually chisel a hole in a concrete slab with a fork, but I'd rather use a jackhammer.

So, is playing it safe Good Business Sense?
The questions seem to indicate they're not really sure which direction they're heading in, but seem to lean towards keeping it more or less the same, maybe adding some halfway-functional stuff in along the way.

I can appreciate the suggestion for people to write to SM directly, and that's a good answer, but to try to quiet down people who are saying what SM needs to know just because you don't want someone's feelings to get hurt is kind off anti-productive. We know Steve Cooper is at least reading this - that's more than you can say for a thoughtful email just tossed out there into cyberspace... who knows who ever sees it?

Quote -
So, if they were, let's say, throwing around the idea of adding the ability to swap heads at the click of a mouse...but nowhere near even finishing the logistics of it...mentioning it here would be tantamount to promising it, and they'd never hear the end of it. 

That's more of a reflection on the immaturity of a large portion of the Poser user base. You are, of course, right. But... so what? If they outright promise something, they should be prepared to deliver. If they suggest or imply something and don't deliver, the more mature people will recognize it wasn't an actual promise. Sure, the kiddies will yell and scream bloody murder, but... who cares? They'll get over it.

This whole thing began with a survey some of us thought was poorly thought out and/or poorly implemented, filled with what we see as irrelevant questions. And while we had the opportunity to KNOW our opinions were being heard, we took it. Steve is well aware of the Poser community, and I doubt very much ANYTHING, no matter how ludicrous, insulting or bizarre someone might say, would surprise him or put him off.

Poser, as it stands, probably does more good for the creators of content than it ever has done for the actual owners of the company-of-the-year which happens to own it at any given time.
Not good.
Sure, maybe CP has profited some, but it's done DAZ and various websites and private individuals probably even more good than it's done for itself.

What I want to see is for SM to come out and say, Look, we're going to make Poser what it could be, and should be. Followed by offering a direct line into their thought process - an official thread for suggestions would be a good place to start. It would convince ME at least, and probably many others, more that they're sincere, as opposed to some half-baked survey which screams MARKETING! at the top of its lungs.

The impression I got from the survey is they're equally (or more) interested in helping Content Paradise as they are Poser, which, to me, is not a good sign much is going to be changing for the better for Poser anytime soon.