@ RHaseltine:

You keep repeating that we are giving into speculations. Alright, let's try and do this: I am sure you can find a fairly new computer at Daz that can be used for some tests. Install Carrara 8.1..1.12 and 8.5.1.19 on that computer, and nothing else.

1. Start 8.5.1.19 and do an 'auto-detect runtimes'. You will see that it does not work. You must add your runtimes manually. Great progress! Ok, after you added your runtimes, double-click on a prop or a figure to load it. A dialog pops-up and asks you to locate the 'default repository', and it keeps asking you over and over each time you load a content. This is no speculation Richard, this is a fact. In its most important function, i.e. loading contents, Carrara has been masterfully screwed-up.

2. Go ahead and create a new scene in 8.1.1.12 and 8.5.1.19 and load this or this or this in textured mode. You will see that each time 8.5.1.19 is noticeably slower than 8.1.1.12. You can do this with just about any content, I gave you just a few examples. Again this is a fact Richard, not speculation. 8.5.1.19 has been hurriedly rushed out the door with minimal testing. In the process the only functions that make Carrara worth using, i.e. its scene building abilities, have been badly screwed-up.

3. Now build a scene of moderate complexity, like this one, with about 40 to 60 lights, set all texture filterting modes to Gaussian filtering, anti-aliasing to Best, object and shadow accuracy to .5 pixel, filter sharpness to 100%, set the Indirect Lighting to AO only, lighting quality to excellent, accuracy to 1 pixel and tile size to 48 and render. You will see that 8.5.1.19 is about 10% to 12% slower than 8.1.1.12. Carrara's renderer has been badly damaged between 8.1.1.12 and 8.5.1.19. This is an undeniable fact Richard. Carrara is decaying from one version to the next, and soon it will become plain useless.

4. Now please explain why Daz has spent months to implement the fast mipmapping filtering mode in Carrara. Was it done to 'speed-up' the renderer? Because if that was the purpose then I would call this the 'Engineering Screw-Up of the Decade'. To speed-up a CPU-based renderer you use Intel's Embree. Today just about every CPU-based renderer uses Embree. Vray, Cycles, LuxRender, Cinema4D, Modo, Lightwave, you name it, they all use Embree. And Carrara beautifully misses the boat by using a 1990 fast mipmap technology used in games. There is simply no excuse for such an engineering screw-up. And this is a fact, not speculation.

Add to this a Bullet physics engine that doesn't work, an unuseable storyboard room, a slow renderer whose output looks like a photo shot with cheap point and shoot equipped with a plastic lens, and you will quickly reach the conclusion that Carrara has become a mostly unuseable piece of software.

Yeah, OK, there are still few people around the globe who are using Carrara. But I would put them in the 'necrophiliac' category, people attracted by corpses.