I'm old enough to remember those days.
Real Life we called it back then.

It wasn't bad: whoever had put it all together had done a half decent job - the lighting was good, textures were pretty awesome and most things looked pretty realistic, even without being GC'd.
Real Life had its disadvantages, though - it was pretty expensive for what it was and it was often difficult to get the People to adopt any pose you wanted, even if you rigged it carefully beforehand.

I always had that feeling that Real Life had a lot of potential but was just too difficult to use properly, at least for the sort of things I wanted to do with it.

When it was replaced with Poser everything became much easier. I found I could do all the things I wanted to do. Even though it's not as high-tech as Real Life, Poser suits me much better, I think.

I like the fact that Poser can be upgraded fairly easily too - you just need a few dollars. Upgrading Real Life required far more: a career, charisma, a personality, friends, enthusiasm, ambition etc.,. I don't know why it had to be so complicated back then. No wonder it's not so popular anymore.

Free stuff @ https://poser.cobrablade.net/