Very nice render, Eric

Nothing wrong with displacement maps for tertiary detail like wrinkles and such.

(But it would be interresting to compare performance and result with a high quality bump map. Or a normals map. Do you really need the actual displacement ?)

And as I said, 2 million polygon figures would be nonsense for most uses.

(But also might be an interresting experiment.)

 

But what about a British WW-1 Mk.1 tank with it's gazillions of rivets and nuts and bolts.

Will it perform better in Poser with a displacement map? Or will it render faster with all the detail being part of the mesh ?

What will work better with elaborate shaders ? Or the lights you want to use ?

Clothes...Better to sculpt wrinkles and detail, or make an displacement map?

What really is the best solution ?

Yes, sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes both.

My point is just, don't do it simply because everybody does it.