Its crashing quite a lot! Specially if I have another program running (like Photoshop or 3d studio)...

I have 4GB of RAM, quad core (Q6600), Windows Vista. Anyone else having a lot of crashes happening on Poser 8?

Everyone who has out of date video drivers experiences this. Some people experience this even with updated drivers, but this is very rare. I have also seen at least two people who denied it was a video driver problem because they were sure they had the most up to date driver, but they were wrong. Somebody else would tell them that there was a newer driver, once they reported which one they had.

So my advice is try very hard to find and install a newer video driver. If you're absolutely sure you have that already, then report the problem to SM, along with your video driver version and your video card model.

Yes, its a couple of months out of date. I'm downloading the latest one to try. I have a Nvidia 9800GX2 (2 GPUs in 1 card). Seens weird to me that

Would it help to just not use OpenGL rendering for the interface window?

I think it would, but you'd lose the benefit of speed you get with hardware acceleration. Also, some of the more advanced video cards will support a more accurate preview of materials.

Oh, on that video card / preview window topic, I've heard that the Quadro professional video cards will allow antialiasing on the preview window, as well as real high resolution textures and even specular maps. Do you know if thats true?

No I don't know, sorry. I know how to put these things in the computer, and I know to buy video cards about 18 months behind the bleeding edge so I don't spend more than I really need to. Hehehe.

By the way, confirmed: My just switching to software rendering on the preview window the crashes stopped. I didnt even updated my video driver. I'll try updating as well, but glad the problem is gone now.

One thing however, on the Material window, moving the materials around is so slow! It was so fast in Poser 7 (pro), and either with OpenGL or software rendering they're slow to drag around in Poser 8. You can see them redrawing at each step they move. Not sure if this is also only on my PC...

I just had Poser crash while doing an IL render and yet FFRender is still working on the render according to Task Manager. I've seen this happen a lot. Anyone else?

Even with all the crashing I've seen, that never happened to me, and it never crashed on me while rendering. Only while using the interface.

Well FFRender eventually crashed too just took it about 5 more minutes.

If you are rendering Separate Process, the Firefly Renderer is a separate program and may not realize Poser died right away, until it tried to update the screen.

For the Video Card Driver.. be aware that some Microsoft updates will roll back your Driver. Even if you updated last week, you may want to check your Driver Details to see if the most recent update rolled them back.

For the Quadro Cards.. the Controls have may features, but I think if you do not have a decent Monitor, you will never notice much from changing the settings. Poser is limited to some things internally, regardless of your card or Video Display Settings for the Program, if the Preview Settings limit it.

This is what I just wrote to SM support....

Hello, encountering new issue in poser 8. I import an obj which I plan to make into a character (has been pre-devided into seperate objs with internal naming convention). I go into the setup room. I then load a characters blank cr2 file (this specific one in near_me...never had a problem in the past in p6)... As soon as I select the imported geometry (the prop) poser crashes.

Anyone else having an issue making characters?

I have crashes after i have render a pic and the morphtool and magnets crash a lot.
So save often if you use it.
Imported geometry is like in Poser 7 ...sometimes it work ..sometimes not.g

System crashed too much at the moment..for not Poser8 stuff i use still Poser 7.
Karth

Quote - Its crashing quite a lot! Specially if I have another program running (like Photoshop or 3d studio)...

I have 4GB of RAM, quad core (Q6600), Windows Vista. Anyone else having a lot of crashes happening on Poser 8?

Poser 8 crashes for me constantly...for no reason I can see most of the time.
I have noticed it crashes while changing libraries, rendering or just opening
.PZ3 files.  Yesterday I had Poser 8 open but empty stage...I checked my email then
opened IE to check something and Poser just simply crashed in the background no error message nothing. I think some  of it, if not all. is to do with using Flash driven libraries.
Sometimes it can take 10 mins to load them also.
I update my video drivers on a reg.basis they are up to date.
I have
Vista Ultimate 32bit
Dual Zeon 2.66GHz
4GB ram
Nvidia Quadro FX4500
SM support were helpful but don't really know.
I've gone back to 7 for now ...hoping SP1 will help but I doubt it.

Quote - I just had Poser crash while doing an IL render and yet FFRender is still working on the render according to Task Manager. I've seen this happen a lot. Anyone else?

I get that ....but I get that in Poser 7 also

my UI opened to nothing but the preview window, all other docked pallets were closed... grrr

yep vvid card driver is up dated

If i loud a scene and it ask you to  find a file  when you find it and  pick it . ask you to find it again
glitch and keeps asking for it, the only way to stop it is to shut poser through task manager any one els have this problem

Quote - I just had Poser crash while doing an IL render and yet FFRender is still working on the render according to Task Manager. I've seen this happen a lot. Anyone else?

This is a scenario where a child process (in this case ffrender.exe) can become an "orphan" when the parent process (poser.exe) dies.  IMO the child process ought to check in with the parent every bucket to see if the parent is still alive, but evidently it doesn't and can remain running for "a while" (maybe forever).  I've reported it as a bug, hopefully it will be addressed.