Wow again...double and even triple wow. That was two evenings of wasted time and frustration I'll never get back. I didn't initially respond since I didn't want to say anything about buying the two programs directly from the authors since I didn't think they wanted it publicly known. Now that it's out, I'll say that I wish I'd bought them through Rendo (as much as I hate and despise the company) since it would be a simple matter to get a refund if I have to...and I'm leaning that way.

Taking the advice from the forum here, I launched back into attempting some simple static drapes. Reboot computer (just to start fresh) and ensure (yet again) that all VWD and Daz bridge files are where they're supposed to be. I loaded V4 in a long negligee and posed her kneeling to try and make the skirt drape down over her back, butt, legs and finally the floor. I encountered all manner of problems with selecting vertices. Selecting 'visible only' is inconsistent in operation, operating sorta correctly sometimes but mostly not selecting anything. I resorted to using the 'Alt' key to deselect the ones I didn't want but that frequently deselected everything. Trying to add the pixels around the neck strap only added to the frustration. Numerous maddening attempts later I had a selection. 'Nail to ' Collision' actually worked. Using the parameters suggested I set a static simulation running. Wow! is this slow. and Wow!, almost nothing is happening except for some bunching around her legs. I let it run for many minutes while Process Explorer (PE) showed lots of activity. That's good, at least it's running. I started and stopped the simulation a few times with no effect that I could see. After maybe twenty minutes I stopped it as a useless exercise. Over the next hour I retried this same drape a couple more times with similar (lack of) results.

Assuming that this was too complicated for VWD I posed V4 with a hairdo and placed a medium resolution blanket over her head to try a simpler drape. I chose her hair and figure as collision objects then hit 'nail to collision'. Nothing........zero......rien.....From my previous experience I'd learned that VWD seems to be unable to apply collision to more than one object at a time. Wow, that's kinda useless. Poser can drape an item over all kinds of things at once...I've done it the few (rare) times Poser didn't crash on me. Anyway, I tried again with just the hair selected for collision. This time it actually started to move but Wow!, it's still painfully slow compared to the same exercise in Poser. As the drape s-l-o-w-l-y crept along it looked like crap. The material was all bunched with spikes and dents everywhere it approached the hair. Then it started sucking INTO the face area where V4's head would be. I started and stopped it once or twice. This didn't seem to effect anything so I let it run it's slow and painful way along until ZIP!, true to form, the blanket shot off the screen into...?

I tried it a couple more times, ensuring that I was following the steps correctly but got pretty much the same thing. I have almost zero experience with dynamics but the few times I'd fiddled with it in Poser impressed the merde out of me. I set V4 beside some furniture, stuck the same blanket (with opacity set low so that I could see through it) over her head and watched as it smoothly settled down over her and the furniture. I experimented with different material settings (density, stiffness, friction etc) and got quite a kick out of how amazing (and quickly) it worked....at least when Poser itself wasn't crashing. (I use Daz not because I like it but because it's been completely stable for me while Poser crashes and locks up constantly). So now I'm wondering why an expensive ($90 bucks Canadian) program can't operate at least as well as Poser's native dynamic capability.

And wow, as I'm twiddling my thumbs watching nothing happen or trying again (and again and again) to make a selection, I'm getting more and more critical and less willing to overlook the massive failings. The GUI is horrible with buttons just stuck on. I can't resize the window. My main monitor is 2560 X 1440 making the VWD window a small strip down one side that I can't move or resize. When the window is maximized it wont respect the task bar or other windows. I tried to take some screen shots with 'Greenshot' but the 'save as' window couldn't butt in front of the VWD window. I had to shut VWD down, do a screenshot and move the resulting window to another monitor so that it would show up there from then on. The task bar wouldn't appear unless I first clicked the corresponding area on another monitor. When I shut VWD down it doesn't usually really shut down, it leaves parts of the GUI on the screen forcing me to (as suggested) restart it from the script icon. When I do this I see nothing for several minutes when I'll get (finally!) the box telling me that VWD is already running but will be shut down. Only once did I have to resort to using PE to kill VWD and Daz...a small victory. I get the impression that the two authors have little experience with real consumer programs, GUI's, and usability. One of the jobs I do at my work is to provide imagery support to aerospace engineers (many of whom are programmers). I populated a few areas in the data tracking programs with video of boring technical stuff. The program they use reminds me of VWD since it has piles of buttons and selections just stuck in a simplistic grid with no concern for looks or usability. It's an engineering tool and they couldn't care less how it looks. That's fine for industry but won't fly in the consumer world, even Adobe makes their programs look nice, and absolutely worries about workflow and the interface.

And lets talk training. If these programs where free I might excuse the total lack of documentation and poor tutorials. I paid big money for these, $90 Canadian, that's a third of the price of Poser Pro...Wow! For this kind of money I expect more than a bunch of videos that only show a basic walkthrough. There's a zillion buttons and selections available, what do they do? How am I supposed know what they all mean? Daz loves to do this and expects people to return endless to the forums to ask the same basic questions over and over again because they refuse to provide real documentation. Has anything been written down or does all the knowledge exist in the author's heads? For this kind of money ($90 CAD!) I expect full, complete, and comprehensive documentation. I bought Reality last year (for a measly thirty bucks) and it came with a very complete and well written pdf manual.

Ahhhh you're going to say, VWD and the bridge are still in Beta or they're not complete or it's still in development.
SO WHY IS IT BEING SOLD? Would you buy a car that had only half the parts ready or who's engine only ran up to 40 KpH? Would you see a movie before it was finished? I'm sliding down a nasty slope here and getting madder by the minute. The authors want money (BIG money!) for programs that JUST AREN'T READY. Are they that desperate for money? I love to support the little guy. I bought Reality, I also bought a couple of plugins being developed by the Blender community. But these (VWD and the Daz bridge) seem to be less than a serious endevour by people who know what they're doing and more of a pipe dream by people with big goals. I do blame myself for getting overly enthusiastic and buying it before it's properly ready (if it ever is) but can you blame me for wanting this? Dynamics in Daz are a dream of most users. I've had reasonable success with the Dyncreator (a very reasonable eight bucks) and am kicking myself for blowing big bucks ($90 Canadian...argh!) on VWD. I do, however, want to kick Rendo-short-sighted-and-desparate-for-money-osity for allowing an unfinished, buggy, undocumented program to be sold here.

In conclusion, I want my money back guys. I'll keep a close eye on this and maybe try it again if it gets fixed and documented but now I'm stuck with a program that just doesn't work.