There is one relatively recent mod over there, F-something, who is unable to have people disagree with him, in however civil a manner. I disagree mildly and suddenly my post has gone... Makes me wish there was a 'Block' button for his posts, so there is no need to put up with the tripe he asserts as immutable fact. I have been a mod on a very busy fountain pen forum, and had we had a user like him, they'd be on moderation for being a troll.

Sorry, back to the point about DS5. I do look forward to it in a way. It gives the opportunity to improve an already good renderer. DS4 seems stuck in a rut at the moment and DS5 might get it to innovate. I have seen people assert that Poser is fantastic, but I am sorry, looking at the output from most Poser users here, they're 5+ years behind an average DS4 user in the quality of the output. There are one or two images that are truly fantastic coming from Poser users, but the general standard really doesn't look much like a huge improvement on what I was getting out of DS0.7 in 2006. Poser is not pushing DS, so it's got comfortable in a position of assumed dominance. DS users need Poser to improve dramatically.

As for the rest of the arguments about DAZ trying to lock in to PA's etc.. I see that, but in all honesty there is so much good quality free stuff and other non DAZ stuff around that I think it's impossible for DAZ to strangle that part of the market. At the moment there are two things that are DS PA exclusives that I know of, HD morphs and Strand Hair. I shall address these separately:

I really don't feel that loosing HD on any of my HD characters would be a problem - I simply don't render in high enough resolution, and I certainly can't look at anything in high enough resolution for it to be an issue yet. I am sure HD can be reverse engineered too, if people really put their minds to it. Felldude claimed to have done so at one point. So, HD morphs as an exclusive. What problem?

Strand Hair distribution as a DS PA exclusive. An exclusive on something that I have never got to look nice - real hair rarely looks like the ropes that strand hair seem to create. Pfft. Not something that I can feel the slightest bit bothered by. It would be nice to have fur that doesn't kill the machine, LAMH is cumbersome for iRay, and strand hair seems to bring high spec machines to their knees. Not something I'm going to fuss over, though.

Anyway, as to the future.. why worry? Que cera, cera. And there is little we can do to influence it.

Regards,

Richard