Now that Poser 8 has been out for a while I'd like to ask those who have P8 if they feel that P8 is more stable and robust than P7.

P7 was better than previous versions but is still prone to ocassional bizare behaviour that is never reproducible and rarely the same problem twice. On the whole that isn't a serious problem (except if you haven't save your work in a while), but is still irritating.

So, has anyone found unexplained behaviour in P8? If so, is it more or less frequent than in P7?

Cheers,
Isaacnewton

Absolutely..!!!  I was plagued with problems in the beginning.  Made Myself VERY unpopular in these forums..
I stopped trying to Communicate with SM.   All they needed was more and more info which I did not have the time to provide..
There has been four service Releases since Poser 8 was put on sale.
Now Poser 8 is quite reliable IMHO..

 Poser 8 with all the Service Releases applied is as solid as any Poser before it - if not more.

It's just as reliable or unreliable as the previous versions. Choose which ever applies to you. I'm still getting unexplained behaviour even with P8 at times, but not more or less frequent.

For me, P7 was perfectly reliable from the start. 
(Or as reliable as you can expect any complicated software to be...)

P8 has been perfectly unusable from the start.  Crash, crash, crash.

Once you get through the initial headache of stabilizing the application, it works reliably.  You will need to work a new interface and a different mindset about lighting.  If you haven't worked with gamma correction in P7 before, I suggest you start serious consideration about embracing it now.

True, but only if you choose to use the new IDL light system. You have the choice. If you're not into realistic stuff, like I am, then everything works the same and you're not going to need IDL. For my toonwork I don't use IDL at all.

Often the assumption is made that everyone who buys P8 will use IDL...... I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of P8 users still doesn't even touch IDL, but keeps on using Poser 8 as they have always used Poser.

IDL is just an option and introduces a whole new dynamic way for props and actors to interact with global illumination.  And aeilkema is correct, it depends how you apply Poser to your needs.

There are  changes in P8 lights i.e. inverse square and shadows..

Once I got used to the new library interface, I decided that this was the best version of Poser yet.
The speed on my quad-core with P8 is very impressive, both in rendering and document navigation. P8 on my machine totally blows away P7 in every aspect.....

.....BUT!! (there always has to be one, eh?)

Back on new year's day, I installed the latest service release for P8 and jumped for joy over the new icon options in the library. Plus, I could swear the rendering speed picked up just a tad.
Like I said, BUT now 3 days later, P8 is barely running worth a crap! What changed over the last 3 days? Hard telling. Other than Photoshop and Poser, this computer gets used for nothing else. And I do mean that literally... nothing else! I'm sure it's something I did and I'll either fix it or remove SR2.1. 

So now you know, P8 is a very good step up from P7. However, being that it's still Poser... you will still hit a snag here or there. As for the IDL, I'm gonna do like normal and wait until somebody else writes a tutorial on it :P   can you say....laaaaazzzy?

I'd say it isn't more buggy than Poser 7. Probably less so. I'd gotten to know the old Poser 7 bugs and work around them, so then the new bugs tend to bother me more. I'm happy I upgraded.

The Poser Pro 2010 Beta, based on Poser 8, is in my opinion the least buggy first release of Power I have ever seen. And it's still a beta. In my opinion Smith Micro is really trying to improve Poser, which is more than could be said for the previous owner.

somebody said that watching youtube (or other flash/flv) vids may cause probs with poser 8.  IMVHO P8X less buggy than P7X, and IDL (GI) is at least a million times better in P8X than in P7X.

Thanks for the replies guys (and Grrrls :) ). To summerise: it seems that overall stability is a tad better with all SRs applied (though it may depend what other programs you have running... nothing new there). IDL is not really an issue for me as I usually render in Vue; I never really liked the Poser lighting system.... sliding those sowing pins around on a pin-cushion... ugh).

Cheers,

Isaac

Quote  " I never really liked the Poser lighting system.... sliding those sowing pins around on a pin-cushion... ugh)."

Try using the parameter dials with the light shadow cams..  especially in poser8,, it is well worth the extra effort..

Rendering faster than P7, but overall performance often slow to respond and sluggish - parameter dials seem "stiff" (same in P7 for a while).
I expect there will be some more SRs to come, hopefully ones that will address the general speed of loading and moving figures.

For me P7 Sr3 is very reliable, P8 still needs SM to pull their finger out and give us a fully functional bug free ap, I just switched from the material room to the Pose room and it launched Talk designer full screen, froze and crashed.  It will sometimes collapse after a couple of renders. Not to mention all the stupid stuff that should have been sorted before it was ever released, biting my tongue not to say anything slanderous but 6 months(?) in I still haven't got what I paid for.

3Dave wrote:" P8 still needs SM to pull their finger out and give us a fully functional bug free ap, I just switched from the material room to the Pose room and it launched Talk designer full screen, froze and crashed.  It will sometimes collapse after a couple of renders. Not to mention all the stupid stuff that should have been sorted before it was ever released, biting my tongue not to say anything slanderous but 6 months(?) in I still haven't got what I paid for.
"
Ahh, this is pretty much what I was worried about. Though it seems that not everyone has the same problems. This raises the issue of the reliability of P8 depending substantially on system specs and other apps installed (or not?). In my mind this would suggest that P8 is not necessarily as robust as it could (should) be. I think that a well written app should not depend on what other apps are doing or have done. A good app should check that the memory is in the state it should be and that if it needs exclusive access then it takes it and reports any conflicts without crashing.
Sadly error traping seems to be lacking in many 3d apps. Perhaps the reason the "high-end" apps are so expensive is that their programmers have taken the time and effort to make their programs robust.

I guess I'll wait to hear if there are improvements in the robustness of P8 before I upgrade. :(

Buy it, try it, return it, if you don't like it... 

Quote - Buy it, try it, return it, if you don't like it... 

Trouble is I like the faster rendering and the new library, not particularly bothered about IDL as I almost exclusively animate and that's not a feature that is really viable in terms of render times, As I didn't volunteer as a beta tester I don't think I should be forced to do this for SM cos they released it before it was ready. ( NOT knocking anyone who did beta tests btw, clearly there were not enough of them and they didn't have long enough or SM did not take time to fully test it for themselves)

Quote - "Buy it, try it, return it, if you don't like it... "

Have You tried returning anything to SM ?

It is an exercise in futility..  Fill out forms and FAX them back..  I do not have access to a fax so I MUST post to SM..  Then they will organise a Credit..  Their business practices are antique..

 There are some bugs in Poser 8, but it renders much faster then P7. P7 is a bit more stable.

Stablity slightly improved, but still some weird, occasional CTD's . Otherwise some P7 bugs have been cured, but sadly P8 introduces some new ones.

I personally dislike the new user-interface and the cache-management is totally messed up. Have to clean up the texture-cache manually from time to time, 'cause Poser doesn't do it itself after closing the program and slowly fills up your HD.
But rendering is ways faster and better, so I'lll stick with it and hope, the developers will update their product regularly and eleminate the remaining bugs.

P7 is great,
P8 is not very good ( Im being polite here), all I get is random crashes, and I have given up trying to get help from SM support team, all they do is ask for more info, and get this
an incident report will close after about four days  as problem solved, so you have to keep
requesting updates to keep the incident report open how crazy is that (lmao).

So I am still using P7 most of the time

There is a demo of Poser 8 if you want to look it over.