"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."

Why not make your own shaders? I've been doing it since 4.8 was released and rocket science it ain't ;). Granted, I actually LIKE making shaders (in Poser too) but if all you have to do is move sliders, all you need to spend is your time.

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

I'll give you the first half of this statement. If you have an ATI card you're sort of SOL...to be expected with a render engine created by a rival graphics card manufacturer. However, Luxrender and Iray in DS are BOTH free since you don't have to pay for either one. Let's face facts ;).

"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."

I don't use Carrara, but I would love to see instancing in Poser. Would be very handy :).

Laurie