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I've lost track of the idea we're talking about here, with regard to bringing Poser "up to par".

Well I didn't just mean the render engine, but that's a good point too. There are a thousand little things that Poser could stand to have fixed or updated, some things which are really dated and annoying.
Bear in mind I don't have Poser 8 yet, so some of those things may have been taken care of, but there are a few that I've gleaned from the forum that haven't been, so it leads me to believe probably a lot of it is still in there.
I can't think of too many examples off the top of my head, but the archaic color picker is one of them. Probably not a big deal to many, but it irritates the hell out of me, and always has.

But I'm not nitpicking Poser here, don't want to, and am tired of bashing it. For all its little irritations and limitations, I find Poser Pro to be an overall great product, the more I get to know it.

But back to rendering, yes, raytracing takes time, but there are som apps out there that just fly through it. I mean, seriously fly, even with GI. So that would be one of those things they could stand to improve on of course.

But you're the one who finally made me see the light; to finally appreciate why I don't and probably won't have my UberPoser any time soon, and I've accepted that.. kicking and screaming, as it were. ;-)

It is nice to know though that with the new python, there may very well be 3rd party plugins to deal with Poser's shortcomings, and I for one will be watching out for them