Up till around the time of V4, DAZ originals only had RSRs (around 2006). I'd guess that anywhere from 25%-50% of DAZ's entire catalog will show up as the shrugging guy in the last two versions of Poser instead of thumbnails. Considering that DAZ Studio doesn't have the same problem, it's a little embarrassing that the program they were originally made for can't show the thumbnails. Besides, I wasted a half hour trying to figure out why the thumbs weren't showing for some content I installed in P8. I did some searches here and found out that the new P8 library no longer supported RSR thumbs.

I wonder if any content creators have been blamed for the lack of thumbnails? A user installs content to P8/P9. Most have thumbnails, but a few don't. The natural reaction would be to blame whoever created the content that doesn't work right with the software. Users usually expect software to be 100% upward compatible with the content available for the software. It's all the more important for Poser since the software inherently relies on external content for its use. Poser has negligible capabilities for creating content within the program.

All in all, I was just looking for an excuse not to buy P9, so it didn't take too much to talk me out of it. The $60 price for a full boxed version of the program (not an upgrade) was awfully tempting. Subsurface scattering and weight mapping will still be around when I'm ready to upgrade a few years from now. They'd be nice to have, but I've lived without them this long and I don't need the latest greatest for what little work I'm doing with Poser right now.

If anyone would like a chuckle about user expectations, look at the below link and search for a review by "iceman". He bought a $17,000 camera for a vacation trip and was pissed off because it didn't come with a lens even though the heading says it's "body only". He would not recommend the camera for a friend. I'm going to guess "iceman" isn't one of the 99% because I do more homework buying a $200 camera than he did for a $17,000 camera.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/674543-STUD/Hasselblad_70380554_H4D_40_Medium_Format_DSLR.html

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon