first of all,poser is here for the long run,im serious,no matter what they do they will always be getting customers,theres no "low end" software like it,corel really screwed up when they did that to bryce,the slow rendering are what im refering to,(paragraph)poser can out run bryce hand over fist,instant feedback for what youre involved in,unless you really know the workings of bryce to get it to work for you as far as time is concerned,textures slow it down,lights slow it down,volumetrics slow it down,running in openGL or sree slows it down,(pargraph)sure poser has no raytracer or anything like radiosity or volumetrics but users expand the abilitys of the core program,im seeing a lot of atmosphere affects being done,globallighting has hit as has faked radiosity,fake reflections,transparencys,just about anyone can really jump into it and be off and running,the mass of freestuff(ooops forgot this.....paragraph)makes up for the lack of expandabilty,the users ,not programmers take it to the limits of thier machines and imaginations,sure plugins would help as far as development but will that set back entry level artists,people that want to use their imaginations to hop in and go rendering,(paragraph)see thats what made bryce so much fun,i.e. bryce 2 and 3,it was simple,light modeling and easy sky animations with landscaping but with 5,ive seen more than a few renders come in and say"after 32 hours this is what i got","this my render that took 10hours","after 24 hours i got this affect",i like bryce dont get me wrong,there is a lot to like about it,in fact a whole more right than wrong but now i see why (whoops forgot again,paragraph)they added network rendering to it,with poser you can have really complex scenes and keep your machine from croaking or having it doing one thing for hours and hours,ok talking about plug-ins what about this kinda stuff here,you buy lightwave or what ever,then you buy $1ooo worth of plugins the the next version comes out and its got all those plugins in the next version,if bryce doesnt fix that rendering bug how many people do you think are going out to buy bryce 6.0,whats everyone going to do go buy two computers so they can network render? CL is really doing what i think is best for poser,letting it rake in the money for them,propack is really expanding thier market ability but slowly,and i think thier taking some lessons from truespace and other mid-market apps not to get too envolved with plugins and waiting for theier own team to get things right the way they want them,then blammo!heres your next version its got this and this and that all in one a funny thing i am seen though is this alot of people with be apps are coming to poser for this that and the other and finding it hard to understand basic funtions but i guess thier used to going to the plugins to help them....anyhoo,posers got tons of extras already as far as plugins go that is and look at the way everyone has made a real community out of it,trade ya this for that,i got this i made in the freestuff,the stores are making money,plain ordinary people with basic knowledge of computers hopping in and going for the ride.......im all for plugins to expand my little bit of knowledge but im very happy with the way things are for poser and cl,they might not be and the programers may not be but i'll bet if you go ask most owners of poser"are you satisfied with this software? can it help you do in your art and do you think this is a good idea this poser thing?"i'll bet 90% of the poser related community will say "sure it could be better but i can create,i can understand 90%of whats going on here,i can get loads and loads of freestuff to expand the software capabilitys and yes i can hop in there and make money and this software can help me do it without(is this a run-on sentence?)a big fuss"........ i see only minimal things coming next... 1.expanded file capabilitys 2.animation expandabiltys 3.intagrated uv mapping 4.program intagration,like truespace and other mid-range apps 5.maybe some sort of sasquatch lite for hair 6.maybe some sort of scenery generation functions anyhoo i love gabbing but i looked back at my bed and oooooooo it looks so warm and inviting,so i'll let you guys chew on this a while and wake up in the morning to see myself read this crap and say"damn,i really am a retard!" cheers and to all"keep on posing!"