Just a heads up, the latest Nvidia graphics drivers are out now, verison 190.62.
Well, it was released on August 21st.

I don't know how many posts I've read here recently of people like BB and ratscloset advising some of the Poser 8 users with problems to update their video drivers, but there have been many.
So there you have it.
www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx

I've been using this driver revision for a few hours now, with my GTX 285 and Windows 7 x64 and it's cleared up at least one problem I've noticed. Not for Poser, but in another program. Seems to be stable.

I don't have Poser 8 yet, so I can't say anything about that.

 Thanks for the heads up. I've subscribed to their newsletter but ... well something must have gone wrong (or it ended up in my spam folder) because I hadn't seen it :) Downloading it now. I have one weird problem in Poser which I'm not sure is mouse driver or video driver related.. but it generally doesn't hurt to have the newest ^_^

I tried these 190.62 drivers (Vista Ultimate x64) with my gtx 260 and got a whole whack of OpenGL errors...  Specifically hardware shading wasn't working in Poser 8 nor would Doom 3 or any games that used OpenGL load.  Rolled back to the 190.38 and all fine...  strange!!!  Glad they work for you!!!

Thanks. I never think to look for updated drivers.

Acadia that isnt too bad ;)
my personal experience is that it makes sense to look for updated drivers for about 6 months. Then the grafic card vendors seem to forget about older grafic cards and all it does is produce problems.
I think i can call myself a gamer (sadly), and my credo is: If something causes problems dont update your drivers even if 99% of the users say: update your driver - instead downgrade them ... and i managed to run games that were called unplayable by 99% of other users with comparable hardware.
I dont want to say that an update CAN help in some cases, but i dont think they still improve a nvidia 5200fx for example ;)

 So far I've had no ill effects with the new drivers. Poser 8, Poser 7, Photoshop and Hexagon (not even sure if Hexagon uses OpenGL) All works as expected.

OTOH I still have the mouse pointer go missing when I try to use the eye dropper in the material room. But I think that's somehow related to the mouse driver - I tried updating that as well but no difference :(

Installed the 190.62 on my Vista 64-bit rendering machine seems to be okay running Poser pro, Vue 7 infinite and  Photoshop CS4. I don't know about Poser 8 yet cus I's ain't installed her yet. However if I do have a problem with the driver I have good old 190.38 on deck.

Instal it yesterday  for my ndvidia 9600
So far no problem with Poser 8 (using Open Gl ) Vue infinite  Carrara pro etc

Poser 8 was working with no crashes. My computer did an update over the last weekend, and then IE was not working right. So, I updated Flash and Poser started suddenly crashing to the desktop. I upgraded my NVidia drivers and the crashes have stopped.

Thanks for the thread. The video driver update stopped the crashes. I am not sure I like this musical chairs update game though :)

lmk

The very reason I let no updates happen unless I review them I learned a long time ago to disable any auto updates for any of my software. I've been burned once too often.

I've installed Poser 8 and find the new drivers are working just fine!

i have geforce 6700 XL

i can not find new drivers. can someone help?

Quote - i have geforce 6700 XL

i can not find new drivers. can someone help?

Yeah, go to the site I linked to above and select your model and operating system from the pull down menus. Under Product Series, select GeForce 6 Series
The 6700 XL is supported and has a version of the latest driver there:

Quote -
GeForce 6 series:
6500, 6250, 6100 nForce 420, 6800 GS, 6700 XL, 6100 nForce 400, 6200, 6800, 6150LE / Quadro NVS 210S, 6200 TurboCache, 6610 XL, 6800 GT, 6600, 6200 A-LE, 6600 VE, 6150, 6150 LE, 6800 LE, 6600 GT, 6100 nForce 405, 6800 GS/XT, 6200 LE, 6100, 6800 XT, 6800 XE, 6600 LE, 6200SE TurboCache, 6800 Ultra, 6150SE nForce 430

thanks.

will this make poser 8 openGL faster?

Quote - thanks.

will this make poser 8 openGL faster?

You're welcome.
I doubt it. It's a driver, not an entirely new OpenGL API. :lol:

do i have to uninstall the driver that is now on the computer?

It might be a good idea to do so first. I don't ever do it unless I have problems, but Nvidia used to be bad about their installers not installing correctly over an older driver. I haven't had any problems  with Nvidia driver installations in a long time now.

Quote - Poser 8 was working with no crashes. My computer did an update over the last weekend, and then IE was not working right. So, I updated Flash and Poser started suddenly crashing to the desktop. I upgraded my NVidia drivers and the crashes have stopped.

Thanks for the thread. The video driver update stopped the crashes. I am not sure I like this musical chairs update game though :)

lmk

LMK, you may have ran into the MS Update issue.. Lately, MS Updates have been rolling back Drivers, so after updating the OS, you often need to reinstall the latest Driver.

You can check this out the next time your OS updates by going to your Driver Properties for your video card and see if yours rolled back. I thought it was to the last MS approved Driver, but I have had it change to a version from May of 2008 to a version from March of this year with no rhyme or reason for which one it was. (When I first noticed this in Support it was rolling back to October of 2008, then suddenly it started going back until it got to May of 2008.. it has been going forwared again since then, with the one jump to March of 2009, before jumping back to June or July of 2008.)

Quote -
LMK, you may have ran into the MS Update issue.. Lately, MS Updates have been rolling back Drivers, so after updating the OS, you often need to reinstall the latest Driver.

What do you have to do to have that happen?
I have heard others mention that many times, but actually only here. Which is strange because I read a lot of 3D and gaming sites.
I myself have never had that happen, not in XP, not in Vista, and not in Windows 7.

I have not figured it out what are the factors. Normally it happens installing the Monthly Update from Microsoft. I suspect it replaces one of the newer files with an older file that causes the Driver to roll back.. As stated, I have not figured out any rhyme or reason, but have confirmed it happens most every month since I first noticed it early this year. (I think the first one that did it was the December MS Update, but I missed it then, because an nVidia Driver came out the same time.

It does not matter if you do automatic updates or manual.. it will happen. I do manual, so I know to check after running the update.

I wonder if you remove the old Driver first, before updating to the new Driver if it may not happen.
For me, it has happened most months with my nVidia 7800, nVidia 6 Series cards... It did not happen with my Quadro, so it may be limited to specific card types.

Specific card types might make a difference, I suppose.
I wonder if it could have something to do with OEM machines and manufacturer Windows installations?
That could be a stretch, but I built all my PCs myself and installed the operating systems from the retail disks. I have never had a Windows update roll back a graphics driver, nor any other driver, and most of this year I've been using XP 32 bit and 64 bit on a dual boot on one PC, Vista x64 and Windows 7 x64 on others, with various combinations of motherboards, HDDs, CPUs, and various video cards: 7600 GTS, 7950 GTS, 8800 GTS, GTX 285.
Are you using OEM's or do you roll your own?

Doing a Google search doesn't turn up anything about this.
You're saying this happens to you every month? Strange.
Have you called MS Support about it to see what they say?

I wouldn't have a clue what to do about it, but it certainly doesn't appear to be some major widespread problem and could be some very specific bug they probably ought to be told about.

The only thing close I was able to find to this sort of thing is in cases of people with OEM machines and onboard video, but even that doesn't seem to be anything approaching widespread and regularly-occurring.

It's probably worth mentioning that if this were something that happens to a lot of people, regularly, month after month, all year, Microsoft would be aware of it and would have done something about it. There should at least be some information out there. But all I can turn up in Googling is some links to various matching keywords such as how to roll back a driver, and how to do windows updates, plus a few people complaining about Vista installing its own drivers for their Nvidia onboard graphics, asking how to install the official ones from Nvidia.

For those running nvidia cards you should install the nvidia system tools. It allows tweaking for a lot of cards as well as an update feature for the latest drivers.

Quote - For those running nvidia cards you should install the nvidia system tools. It allows tweaking for a lot of cards as well as an update feature for the latest drivers.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Nvidia System Tools only for people who have an Nvidia nforce motherboard chipset?

I tried it on a comp with an Intel chipset and it just crashed the whole system upon loading, big time. As in, total system freeze. Repeatedly and consistently. That was a while ago though, so I don't know if maybe the newer version is more compatible with other chipsets or not.
But their "Products Supported" page only lists nforce motherboards.

Anybody reading this may want to look into it before trying it...

And you probably don't want your Intel chipset drivers being auto-updated with nforce drivers. ;-)

Not only that, but it's really not a good idea to always update to the latest Nvidia graphics drivers without checking it out first. Auto-updates of any kind are really not a good idea, period.

No. Just more options for those with an nforce board. The nforce chipsets seem to have their own set of problems as far as boards go.
 I've installed the system tools on several different boards and cards without a problem.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_system_tools_6.02.html

OK, thanks for that, I think I'll have a look at it.
After my last experience with it I've been avoiding it like the plague. ;-)

For anyone who wants to screw with their video card settings, I think Riva Tuner is a better option than anything Nvidia or anybody else has put out, and it works for ATI cards too:
www.guru3d.com/index.php

Important note: You CAN totally hose your video card with Riva Tuner if you don't know what you're doing. As in, burnt up, useless, destroyed.

nVidia seems to have taken down the 190 driver and gone back to 186.81.

Whichway

Quote - nVidia seems to have taken down the 190 driver and gone back to 186.81.

Whichway

I still see it there. 190.62.
www.nvidia.com/object/win7_winvista_64bit_190.62_whql.html

DISCLAIMER:
That above link is for the GTX 200+ series, 64 bit, for Windows 7.
Don't anybody go downloading it if you don't have the setup for it.

Don't say I didn't warn you. ;-)

Huh. Yup, it's there and if you substitute "32" for "64" in that link, you get the 32-bit version. But it's not found through thier search/scan page.

Whichway

Ah, there's the rub - I'm using a notebook - 8600M GT and that is not supported by the 190 driver. Oh, well.

Whichway

In no way I'm gonna download a new Nvidia driver. The last time I did that, I had nothing but troubles and I had to reïnstall my old driver. I have a vista64 system with a geforce 8800 GT and I have no troubles running Poser 8. Poser pro gave me some issues in the beginning but I fixed that by disabling the synchrone optimalisation in the 3D-settings of the driver, after that openGL and PoserPro ran like a charm.

best regards,

Bopper.

Bopper, not all of the Nvidia driver sets are great. I always search around, mostly in the gaming forums and at EVGA's site to see what people are saying before grabbing a new video driver.
There have been some problematic releases in the past. Few and far between, but each new GPU model series has problems at first until they iron it all out.

Having said that, when you deny yourself new drivers, you also deny yourself updates to things like phys-x, CUDA, and most importantly, new OpenGL releases which are part of the driver revision.
Currently, OpenGL is up to version 3.1

I don't know, but there may be an advantage to be gained in having the latest OpenGL with Poser 8, especially since they're working on the SR right now, and may be using the latest OpenGL too.
Since they advise everyone to use the latest drivers, there may be a good reason for that.

Quote - LMK, you may have ran into the MS Update issue.. Lately, MS Updates have been rolling back Drivers, so after updating the OS, you often need to reinstall the latest Driver.

I've had this happen a few times myself.

Microsoft don't seem to be very friendly to OpenGL. You pretty well have to go the graphics card/chipset manufacturer to get a reliable driver.

Quote -
Microsoft don't seem to be very friendly to OpenGL.

That's because Microsoft doesn't have anything to do with OpenGL. They didn't invent it and they don't develop it.

Quote -
You pretty well have to go the graphics card/chipset manufacturer to get a reliable driver.

You say that as if they should be responsible for it. That's never been the case and you should get drivers from the manufacturer for every piece of hardware you have, where applicable.

Quote - Bopper, not all of the Nvidia driver sets are great. I always search around, mostly in the gaming forums and at EVGA's site to see what people are saying before grabbing a new video driver.
There have been some problematic releases in the past. Few and far between, but each new GPU model series has problems at first until they iron it all out.

Having said that, when you deny yourself new drivers, you also deny yourself updates to things like phys-x, CUDA, and most importantly, new OpenGL releases which are part of the driver revision.
Currently, OpenGL is up to version 3.1

I don't know, but there may be an advantage to be gained in having the latest OpenGL with Poser 8, especially since they're working on the SR right now, and may be using the latest OpenGL too.
Since they advise everyone to use the latest drivers, there may be a good reason for that.

Having the latest release of opengl isn't going to do you much good if your vid card doesnt support it. 

Quote -

Having the latest release of opengl isn't going to do you much good if your vid card doesnt support it. 

OK.
Bopper has an 8800 GT. That supports OpenGL 3.1
According to Nvidia, all cards from the GeForce 6 series through the GTX 200 series support OpenGL 3.1.
Might be why SM's Minimum specs specifies a "recent graphics card" or words to that effect.

Quote - > Quote -

Having the latest release of opengl isn't going to do you much good if your vid card doesnt support it. 

OK.
Bopper has an 8800 GT. That supports OpenGL 3.1
According to Nvidia, all cards from the GeForce 6 series through the GTX 200 series support OpenGL 3.1.
Might be why SM's Minimum specs specifies a "recent graphics card" or words to that effect.

Not sure where your getting that info.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_8800_gt_us.html
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gtx_260_us.html

look under specifications for each.  opengl 2.1

Quote -
Not sure where your getting that info.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_8800_gt_us.html
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gtx_260_us.html

look under specifications for each.  opengl 2.1

That's because that's what version of OpenGL was available when those were released to the public.
OpenGL 3.0 just was released last August, and 3.1 just last month or so, and those video cards came out long before that.
Those are old specs.
The 8800 series and the GTX 200 series both most definitely do support OpenGL 3.1

This shines some light on how it works.
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/opengl_3_driver.html

OK well that's OpenGL 3.2, which seems to have even more advancements.
The 8000 series and up are included in that list, but not below those models.

Quote -

You will need one of the following graphics cards to get access to the OpenGL 3.2 and GLSL 1.50 functionality:
Desktop

• Quadro FX 370, 570, 1700, 3700, 4600, 4700x2, 4800, 5600, 5800, Quadro VX200, Quadro CX
• GeForce 8000 series or higher; Geforce G100, GT120, 130, 220, GTS 150, GTS 250, GeForce GTX 260 and higher, any ION based products.

However, in searching for drivers, Nvidia's "Products Supported" list for the 6 Series and up says it includes support for OpenGL 3.1.

191.07 are ready

I've been using this new driver for a few days now with my GTX 285 and it seems fine.
It's the first one with OpenGL 3.2, BTW.
Now if we could only get the 3D app developers to actually start using the advancements these newer drivers offer, we'd be getting somewhere. ;-)

Seems to do just fine with all my 3D apps. I don't have Poser installed at the moment because I just got a new HDD and reinstalled Windoze and my main programs and haven't gotten around to Poser yet, but I'm sure it's fine with Poser too.

One thing I can say is with the last driver, under Windows 7 x64, a few of my games were showing some artifacting, particularly in Far Cry 2, but that's all gone now.

You poor guys with your games cards. :(
Just save up for a proper opengl card.
Update your driver every 18 months, if that.
And:
No lags, No mouse jerking, lovely previews nearly as good as renders.
No more complaints every week about exactly the same faults.
No more "update drivers to solve this problem" answers, which hardly ever work.
Sure it takes some time with Poser to get the Opengl card "tuned up" but, OH BOY, what a difference!!

What exactly is a "proper" OpenGL card?
Surely you're not suggesting buying  a Quadro for Poser, which wouldn't make a bit of difference?

I consider my GTX 285 "proper" enough, thank you, and you can get the same answer from a whole lot of Maya, Softimage and 3ds Max users too.
Any program that has "proper" GLSL can "properly" utilize the advanced OpenGL in even the lowly gaming card. It's not in the hardware, it's in what they write into the software the video card is being used for.
And speaking of which, any Nvidia card can be "soft-modded" to act just like a Quadro, far as I know, since the chips are identical...

Not to mention, I can also use it for games, which I do, which is something a "proper" OpenGL card can't do.

In any event, who's struggling?Who has mouse jerks, lags and all that? I sure don't.

I dont think poser use all the performances of a quadro, before my 9500 gt i've a 6200 fx and both work well, a quadro is really usefull on a graphic station with autocad, not for the lambda with win32 and poser lol !

No, Poser doesn't use the advanced Quadro features. While Poser does have hardware shading since version 6 or 7, it's not particularly advanced and any gaming card since then can display what Poser can do for hardware shading.
For that matter, Poser's hardware shading isn't really that good. Many of the "SSS" shaders just glow in hardware shading mode and don't look even remotely like the rendered result, and anything with a trans map simply doesn't show up.
I don't know what version of the OpenGL shading language Poser uses, but I would be surprised if it's anything more recent than OpenGL 2.0.
If you look at some of the most recent Autodesk products such as Mudbox, Maya, 3ds Max and Softimage, you can see some really good examples of what a consumer level (gaming) graphics card can do, with the realtime shadows and normal and displacement maps, bumps, reflections, shaders, OpenGL photometric IES lights... and all that good stuff.
And then there's 3DCoat with its CUDA and voxels.
Poser actually is a really poor example of what can be done with OpenGL, aside from its very fast redraw speed with large textures. Everything else in Poser, OpenGL-wise is.... lacking.

Yeah, the qauadro cards are used more for CAD programs where they can display wireframe models with full anti-aliasing much faster, as well as some more architectural-specific shaders, but a quadro has little or no advantage in a "typical" 3D application over a regular high quality gaming card.