The lighting will change as the render engine got changed too. Add to that that Pro can gamma correct each bitmap texture you use, and you get a lot of potential subtle (and not so subtle) differences. That, and the lighting in poser 8 can now have linear and square falloff, another difference maker.

As to the material room being heavier, it is actually faster for me. Just picking a material from the viewport took seconds in pro, where now in 8 it is almost instant. At least for me.

As to the blurring effect on the textures in poser pro... You can disable filtering in the image map node (Filtering->None). But, you might get some moire effects or stuff.

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