I've noticed that some of my old reliable IBL based lights no longer work as they did when I saved them. I started with P8 and now use P9 and P10. In particular the IBL doesn't render at all unless your render settings include raytracing. Unless I've lost my mind, I could get perfectly good IBL based renders in "draft mode" render settings.

And another thing, IIRC, when I first got P8 and experimented with the IBL lights that came with Poser, the renders were horrible, with everything way overexposed. I remember thinking, "If this is the improved lighting system, how bad was the old?" Now those same lights render fine (so long as raytracing is on.)

So did something change?

Poser 10 has Gamma Correction...

Right. but that's not it. This is what I get with one IBL, white, intensity 100%, no raytracing. 

And this with the same IBL with raytracing on (one bounce).

You should really turn off that ambient channel on Vicky, she is glowing red.

I wrote some stuff and then it started changing behavior.

Hang on.

OK something is going on that isn't expected or desirable.

I have been doing a sequence of renders, each time changing one setting. At the end of the sequence, I have RT, IDL, and IC turned off. Depending on the sequence I used to reach that state, I have seen both a lit and an unlit result.

I then reduced my image size to speed up the process and the lighting got 3 times as bright.

Something is broken. I'm reporting this without yet having clearly identified what - letting you know though that something isn't right.

I think I figured it out. This is a UI bug.

The render settings seems to be trying to "help" you by disabling IDL if you turn off raytracing. Both checkboxes turn off when you uncheck RT.

However, the IDL is till actually enabled, and without RT, IDL doesn't work.

+IDL + IBL - RT means black - no light.

Before you disable raytracing, explicitly uncheck IDL, then uncheck RT.

When I do this, it looks the same in the render settings but it isn't the same. IBL - IDL - RT still shows a lit scene.

Aha - when I showed the Dimension 3D - Render FireFly dialog, it revealed the truth. I found that every time the scene was black, it was because "Enable Indirect Light" was still checked.

On the built-in dialog, it shows as unchecked. This is going to confuse the hell out of people.

Look at your lit render - see how under her arms it's dark. You clearly have IDL enabled there. Otherwise everything would be uniformally lit by a 100% white IBL.

Whew! Thank God. I have to confess that I had a small amount of genuine concern that I really was losing my mind. I've reached that age where these things start showing up, and I was afraid that the answer would be something like, "No, that's the way it's always worked."

So, BB - I may be pushing my luck with this "losing my mind" thing, but would this also explain my memory of the IBL lights that came with P8 as being way, way too bright? Maybe in trying to fix that, they broke something else.

BB, as far as I can tell, there is still a problem with GC and any image attached to an IBL light. Sometimes the image on the IBL will display correctly and sometimes it will be blown out as if GC has suddenly gone to 1.0 instead of 2.20. And its not just a display thing, it will render that way. And it flip flops. Every 3 test renders or so the GC on the image attached to the IBL will flip, either it will be correctly displayed or it will be blown out. Checking the box for custom GC and putting it at 2.20 doesn't stop this behavior. When I mentioned this in the past, someone said that this had been reported but it doesn't seem to have been fixed but I haven't gotten and installed the latest update.

LL - You are correct in every particular. I was able to reproduce exactly what you describe with ease.

I have zero investment in angular maps, so this problem has no effect on me. That doesn't mean I have no use for IBL - I just have no use for detailed images in IBL - all my IBLs are procedural blobs and you can't tell the difference. 

However, I understand that this is a bug and should be fixed. (Along with lots of other problems with Firefly)

I looked for a bug report on this but didn't find one. On the other hand, that is not proof, since sometimes bug reports are accidentally marked "private".

"When I mentioned this in the past, someone said that this had been reported"

Do you remember who said that?

Sorry, BB, I don't remember in what thread it was that someone mentioned it had been reported. I didn't bookmark the thread. Of course with my memory it could have been you or someone else in the thread telling me that I should report it. But I really think it was said by someone that it had been reported. It should be fixed. Sometimes I prefer the look of IBL, and it gives me contrast control which I don't think it possible under IDL. For that matter I haven't figured out why there aren't some things like contrast and saturation built into the interface so they are applied at render time. I hate having to go to an art program after I've saved my finished image. It's not that I hate post work, it's just that for a while (around P7 and P2010), that I could produce an image right out of Poser that I felt was postable without post work. Anyway, I hate that because of a bug that I am 'crippled' in my choice of lightng solutions.

For the record, in the OP I implied that this problem was happening in P9 as well as P10. I've been unable to replicate it in P9, so I was probably just confuse about that.