Oh, I'm familiar with all the shortcomings of Carrara.  Painfully so with my limited use of it.  Even the scene navigation felt like 1998 to me.

However, that doesn't mean anything.  All that stuff you mentioned would actually make sense and be useful.  But when it comes to small companies marketing an application to the masses, the things they add are usually "bullet point" features.  Something that they can plaster all over the site to make the software look cutting edge.  Those features you mentioned wouldn't mean squat to the average poser user looking to purchase a software that they mistakenly think is a good alternative to more expensive packages.

Daz already has a "new" technology they call HD morphs.  Which is basically the ability to add superfine details to the Genesis 2 characters on the fly.  So that's what is coming to Carrara next I would assume, and the mipmapping is to help create these high definition morphs in Carrara, with some form of alpha brush sculpting.  I think that's probably the reason.  But your guess makes sense too of course.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.