Particles are useful to stills renderers as it allows for unique material flows of water, smoke etc without postwork. A single frame, postwork is fine, but for a sequence of images it is much more immersive (no pun intended) if the water, smoke, mud, lava, whatever... has moved between frames in a manner that is believable.

I looked at IRAY with DAZ4.8... not free. The renderer is, but you buy all the texture stuff separately... ever added up all the 'add ons' that DAZ have available? Comes to 100's of dollars. Not free.

Oh, BTW, I use an AMD video card. IRAY is no advantage to me over Luxrender. Which IS free.

I have DAZ 4.7, but never use it because the library is retarded. I can never find anything, and have to constantly refresh the metatdata. I accept it is just a lack of familiarity, but why spend the hours on something that only replicates what I already have?

I'd be very happy if Poser had instancing so I could do proper outdoor scenes like I can do in Carrara. I'd also be happy if DAZ did some work on Carrara. Poser and Carrara are perfectly fine for me, and I would like to see it continue in development.

Agreed on instancing,this would only helps to create proper outdoor scenes,I don't use Carrara or VUE and this would be just great for me,but I would rather use this for multi figure scene,because right now creating 4-6 person scene in bit pain Particles yes this I want to use,usually if I want to create such effect then Photoshop or I use 3DS MAX

IRAY is great thing,but there is always with DAZ they give you something free and then start you charge for this like drug dealer(maybe is this strong word,but who cares),I've done few comparison with IRAY like with CPU render and GPU render,there has been difference around 1 hour

Here is test which I've done

GPU(560TI 2GB ) with CPU(X5670 6core overclock'd 4.2GHz) mode took 39mins 

CPU mode only(X5670 6 core overclock'd 4.2GHz) 1hour and 30mins

Link to thread and renders 

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?95451-Which-Way-to-go-for-Smith-Micro&p=884695&viewfull=1#post884695

You are not alone who is not familiar with GUI of DAZ due this I don't use it,previously I've used DAZ due the FBX capability,but after few tests and problems which I think I've posted over in 3DS MAX forum I'm now using old and still good OBJ for exporting my scenes to 3DS MAX,I think Poser FBX is too not the best for exporting newer figures to FBX,there are few issues 

I've went too with R9 290 due the I want to use my GPU for OpenCL projects and mainly I want to use my GPU for rendering,new LuxRender should be great thing if will be implemented to Reality or better in Poser in some extent 

Thanks,Jura