Set them as shown in image 1 and hit render.

The little red dot things appear like in image 2 and then I get an IDL render like in image 3.

To my tired and bloodshot eyes the result look the same. So have I missed anything out. ?

Yes its the same, because there is nothing around your robot to reflect light onto it.

Place a wall or two around the robot, and also a floor. Observe the difference then.

When you see the pre-calculation for IDL, and it is all black except for the red dots indicating where sampling happens, it tells you that nothing will be different. Black = 0. Nothing to reflect = 0. Therefore nothing to reflect = black.

Am I right in thinking that every light in the scene becomes an IDL light ?
Or does P8 'lose' things like spots.

Also 4 quick questions...

In the image here there are blotches. What causes these and how can they be removed?

2nd one is if I use one of the original P7 IBL light sets that included in P8, what does P8 do with the image that you use to create the light with? Does it ignore it or does it do something else.

I ask because I wonder if it's possible to do this.

Add a background photo in poser. Use the same photo to make a 'probe' which in turn helps make an IBL light set.  Using that "light" and render in IDL. would that give a light that matches the original photo better than it would in P7 with IBL.

Final one :) Render times.  Using various light sets including the P7 IBL ones the render times where'nt too bad.  But when I used the P8 light with a gel and IDL, the render took age. About 4.5 before I gave up and it had only done about 80% of the image.  So can this long delay be avoided?

Lights don't become "IDL" lights. They stay what they are, except that IBL (Image Based Lights) behave differently when IDL is on. Spots, infinites, and points behave the same.

What changes is that everything is lit by everything else. Ultimately things are lit by the lights, but the secondary light from these lit things bounces around. Since this is a significant effect in real life, IDL helps a lot with realism.

The blotches are because the interpolation algorithm for the GI needed improvement. SR1 fixes this problem. They're very hard to get rid of with the initial release, unless you use some seriously ridiculous render settings, and then render time shoots through the roof. With SR1, quality settings can be decreased a lot, resulting in faster renders with better quality.

The image used in an IBL is effectively projected onto a gigantic sphere around your scene. This is the difference from earlier. Without IDL, IBL behaves like tiny area lights near everything, and is not blocked by walls and such. With IDL, IBL behaves like environmental lighting, but if you actually have an enclosed interior, with no windows or open doors or skylights, then the IBL does nothing at all.

That's why it is important to light an interior with light sources as would be found in real life. In a completely enclosed room, like a bathroom, if there are no light sources in the room, the room is dark.

If you surround your objects with a photo, such as when you use my environment sphere, there is no point in building an IBL for it. IBL is a cheat that enapsulates environmental lighting in an image, so you don't have to have an actual 3D environment. If you do have a 3D environment, or even a significant chunk of the environment, such as a backdrop, the light coming from this will be taken into account by IDL. And, by definition, the objects in your scene will experience matching lighting that corresponds with whatever forced imagery you've included around those objects.

P8 render times are much improved in SR1. However, anyything with transparency is slow in both. I've had a number of discussions with SM about why transparency is slow in Poser with raytracing of any kind, even in Poser 7 with transmapped hair. Try using ray-traced shadows with transmapped hair, and it takes forever.

We'll all have to keep telling SM that they have to find a way to speed that up. Poser figures need hair.

icant get rid of them , the  seting changes just make it worse , and long render times

Wait for SR1

The 'wait for SR1' answer is entirely valid but it's getting a little boring.

I know SR1 is in beta testing and they keep finding bugs and glitches in all sorts of areas, but for our sanity as well as theirs I think we need a meaningful 'ready by' date.

bagginsbill has already said somewhere that they've already passed their initial target date and sort-of said it'll be this month, sometime, but it would help me, and I suspect many others, to have a more precise answer.

You can't have a more precise answer for fixing bugs. They are fixed when they are fixed, and the release isn't launched until its completed. Unless you'd rather have a rushed quick fix, and have to wait for SR2?

We get this all the time in western North Carolina this time of year.

"What day will the fall leaf colors look best?" How they hell could anyone know that? LOL! And people insist on a specific date as well!

 I'd say that by now, they should get SR1 out and start working on SR2. There are so many initial problems with Poser 8 (even if I'm personally not hit by most of them) - The renderer is a crucial part of Poser, and anything that can speed that up almost warrants its own SR. If it's the renderer that is causing the new bugs, then I understand they have to keep working on that. But if it's anything else, I'd say OUT with it now and then fix whatever else is bugging it in an SR2.

I'd really like the larger thumbnails in the library and I'd REALLY like a renderer that doesn't rival Bryce in slowness the moment you turn on any of the bells and whistles. 

Oh and - I hope someone is working in the Material Room lag. It's a major annoyance... and surely I can't be the only one who actually uses the Material Room (well.. I know I'm not but I'm curious as to why so few have mentioned that particular bug)