AmbientShade posted at 5:56AM Sun, 13 November 2016 - #4289921

EClark1894 posted at 4:05AM Sun, 13 November 2016 - #4289917

To be honest though, I believe that Poser's "death" would actually be the worse thing that could happen to DAZ. I know that sounds strange, but while I was never a fan of Studio's existence, I do believe that it make's Poser a better program. If they didn't cling so hard to the mantra of backward compatibility, which I actually believe is holding it back, it would be an even better program. Likewise, I believe that if Poser "died" Studio would pretty much just stop trying. I also don't think it would be free any longer, but that's off on another tangent.

What is it about backwards compatibility that you think is holding Poser back?

If they didn't maintain compatibility with older content - say for Poser 12 - then they'd lose most of their customers who would have virtually no content to work with in the new version, aside from whatever was made for the new version. That would also force them into the content market or at the very least require them to hire a full team of artists to make up for the loss and that gets expensive pretty fast.

You can add new features to software without ripping out the old, unless the old directly conflicts with the new. For example, weight mapped figures don't work for any version of Poser prior to 9, but any of those old figures can still work as-is in 9 or higher and they can be converted to weight mapped rigging if you want them to be. Every new version has added features that are not compatible with older versions. SubD morphing, and smooth translations would be two of the most recent.

I would love to see them remove the need for geometry groups and make rigs directly selectable without them, but that doesn't mean they should remove the coding that reads those groups because that would make older content incompatible. They'd pretty much be committing market suicide by doing so.

I'm not saying they should get rid of compatibility where it makes no sense or gains no benefit. But if holding on to compatibility keeps us from getting another feature or even improving one we already have, then it should go. Even if, for example, it means we can no longer play with Posette in Poser 12, that's okay. I have Poser 2 through 11 to help me do that..