Quote - Poser Pro 2014 isn't designed for the Load, Conform, "Make Art" brigade 

Isn't that pretty much the same as saying PP2014's new features are geared more towards content creators? I should have included content customizers as well, but I thought that would have been understood since there's not a whole lot of difference. Both require digging in and changing or creating things to suit your specific needs. And all content creators aren't vendors. I make most of my own content. I'm not a vendor. 

Quote - On the other hand, Poser Pro 2014 makes content vendors a little less relevant.  I take that back, it makes vendors a lot less relevant.

With the fitting room, any figure can wear any figure's clothing. Clothing vendors have become less relevant.

That's one way to look at it. Except that you still need someone else to create new clothing if you can't do it yourself. The only thing the fitting room really does to vendors is alleviate the die-hard focus of only one figure being supported, since now, a lot of existing clothing can be fit to most any figure. It's not a fool-proof method tho. There are some items that only work with the figure it was designed to work for. Sure you can make it work, but it will never look quite as good as it does on the figure it was intended for. It's always a case-by-case basis, and if the clothing was designed poorly to begin with, (and there is a ton of poorly designed clothing out there), then it will fall apart in the fitting room no matter how much you mess with it. The only way to fix some pieces is by welding them together properly in an external modeler and then bringing them back into Poser, which will then require more work to get it ready for the fitting room. I do think its a good feature tho. I just don't see it being the vendor-killer you seem to think it is. Vendors can also use it to make a new piece fit multiple figures, or go back through their older catalog and update the items they made years ago to work with newer figures. I haven't seen any examples of this being done so far, but it's potentially an untapped market for veteran vendors, since it makes the process many times faster than before. There are still plenty of Poser users who don't have PP2014, and that will likely be the case for a while.  

Quote -
Thanks to the add-on framework, items like the Hair Control System means that I can easily fit hair made for 1 figure onto other figures.  Hair vendors become less relevant.

That framework also allows for products like EZSkin and the upcoming EZMat program to clean up and make old content useable with the newer features of 2014.  Figure vendors become less relevant. 

With the Reality plug-in, I don't bitch about the firefly engine, I just use it for simple previews. 

Hasn't the add-on framework always been there? I thought thats how Poser has expanded over the years.

Reality isn't PP2014-specific. It's available for P9/2012 and P10. Same with EZSkin, and I'm sure EZMat whenever it comes available. Not sure which hair control system you're referring to as there have been several over the years, but I don't remember anything in PP2014 referring to hair. 

Quote - Since I have really started to work 2014, my wish lists have changed dramatically.  Nowadays, it's mostly props and merchant resources.  As far as clothing, all I really need are shoes (The final frontier for conversions).

Clearly you have benefitted a lot from the fitting room, and that's great. My comment was about PP2014 specifically, and how most of it's new features are intended for content developers/customizers, not necessarily vendors (or average users - who won't even use the morph brush to correct poke-thru unless they absolutely have to).

Since we're talking specifics, lets look at the actual features:

There are only 5 additional features in PP2014 that aren't in P10 or PP2012:

• The Fitting Room

• Copy Morphs From Figure to Figure (which can be done in the fitting room, so that's not really an extra feature, it should be included with the list of fitting room features, and Poser really doesn't know the difference between an actual figure or a piece of clothing - they're both figures. but, marketing and all that... )

• Display Hidden Channels (can be done by editing a cr2)

• Change Calculation Order of Channels (can be done by editing a cr2)

• Copy/Paste Weight Maps

There may be one or two more that I missed, but I don't think so as I've looked over the comparison chart several times just tonight. So technically, without discounts, you'd be paying $185 additional for those 5 features, as opposed to just $65 for all the OTHER features that P10 has over PP2012. For some, the fitting room alone is well worth the extra $185. It would definitely save money for some people in the long run, since that's that much less they have to spend on additional clothing/accessories. But is it really worth $185?

Not trying to bash Poser, and I don't regret my upgrade as I've been using it rather extensively since release day, but I've never actually looked at the price differences compared to features until now, so yeah feeling a bit hood-winked on that one. Ah well. I will definitely be thinking twice when PP2016 releases. If it's another $250 just to upgrade from PP2014 as it was from PP2012, those new features had best be serious, massive improvements to the entire program across the board, or something major that I desperately need - and so far I can't really think of anything that major. I didn't mind paying $250 to sidegrade from P7 to PP2012, as the advances and improvements were well worth it, IMO. This time, not so much. 

 

~Shane