Without photorealistic figures, photorealistic rendering makes no sense.

On the contrary, the more "perfect" the render engine, the more the "imperfections" of the figure (bad sculpting, bad rigging) will stand out. Please accept the fact that some people either have a heightened ability to spot artistic problems or just have higher artistic standards than others.

Personally, I intentionally stay on "THIS" side of photorealism, because the "classic" Poser look is less grating on my eyes than all those "near miss" attempts at photorealism I see in the 3D world. (Not just from Poser, but from more "professional" 3D apps, too)

If you want to really go for photorealism, EVERYTHING has to be perfect. Even 99.99% won't do. At least to those with a very keen eye for details.

And Poser figures are so laughable removed thom being truly photorealistic, that putting them in a photorealistic lighting environment is just a waste of time.

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Poser's main use always was to tell a story or visualize an idea, and it can do this just as well for most hobbyist users in an "almost" realistic way instead of trying to catch up with the "Pro" apps.

Whoever was in charge of Poser since version 5, always had it completely backwards:

You FIRST create the realistic figures and THEN bother with the render engine.

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And no, there is no time left anymore.

I stopped waiting for better figures around Poser 9 or so, and started creating my own, based on the best existing meshes I could find.

I have no need for Superfly. It's still slow (compared to my optimized Firefly), grainy and it lacks basic functionality like displacement maps. (Not to mention that Poser 12 scrapped a huge library of legacy Python scripts for no good reason at all.)

And if I really ever need a "better" render engine than Firefly, I'd just use a professional one or use the original in Blender.

Right now, Superfly is just a distraction. A consolation prize.

A bone we've been thrown so we'd feel bad bitching about the lack of quality figures.

But the bucket stops here.

I won't buy another copy of Poser until it ships with a set of figures that at least have a proper mesh design with realistic muscle topology and are based on scans of actual human beings.

That's the LEAST I can demand from a 3D app that focusses on depicting the human form and sells for a couple hundred $$$.

After all those duds and wannabe "Vicky killer" figures that were inflicted on us during the decades, I'm not holding my breath, though.

BTW, anyone remember "Renda"?

https://www.renderosity.com/forums/threads/2310060/print

LOL!

But as I said, I have my own figures, so I'm not dependent on Poser anymore.

But the point is that many hobbyist users DO depend on whatever ships with Poser.

And those users have made it abundandtly clear that they don't like what they are seeing.

They left for G8, and nothing else.

Give them something comparable, and they might come back.

Give them a Renda, a La Femme or a Dawn and they'll stay where they are.

It is really that simple.