A bit OT but maybe not...

The Nova rabbithole goes a bit deeper than you'd think. I'm of the opinion that the creator had permission to use gen 8 as a source for standalone derivatives. Consider this; the creator of Nova, Vyuser, is a PA at Daz. A few years ago she was selling standalone figures very similar to Nova but only as Daz native figures. I purchased one of these standalone figures, Janna. It's basically a slightly modified gen8 figure mesh with slightly changed topology and UVs. It was being sold as an "original" standalone...

Here's the Janna mesh next to Nova in Poser. The mesh is a slightly less altered g8 clone than the Nova mesh, the texture base for both appears to be the same. Vyuser used to create texture MR for G8.

Being that these were originally being sold at Daz and are obviously G8 derivatives there's simply no way that such a thing would pass notice there. It's my opinion that Daz is totally aware of the nature of these "standalones", they sold them, for a while, in their own store. 

I wouldn't be so quick to think that Nova is an illegal figure in other words... the reasons why they were eventually pulled from Daz, and Nova was pulled from Renderosity, I wouldn't venture to guess. Maybe it just became inconvenient when people started noticing. Why would you pay standalone figure prices for a G8 morph/texture set maybe? 

Both Nova and the DS standalones, including Janna, are still available for purchase at another store. Daz doesn't seem very concerned about it.

As far as the realism thing goes? Yeah, none of these figures look real to me. Pretty or aesthetically appealing isn't the sole providence of "realism" 

Besides, if you're not interested in modeling, texturing, 3d animation, Shaders, etc side of Poser (and specifically Poser's way of doing such) and just want to make "realistic" depictions of aesthetically appealing women why are you bothering with Poser at all? AI is probably going to claim any potential new users that are interested in just that... I dont think this statement is a stretch of the imagination at all.