"It's raydiosity rendered lighting, that's very high end, it depends on how the user chooses to light the scene."

Cool! Clearly they aren't doing radiosity in real time - do you know if they are using pre-calculated light maps?

"Is it a PS2 quality 3D experience? no. But I don't spend time playing games, so perhaps I'm not as affected by the appearance, it's a f##kload better than any form of VRML, or any other web 3D though"

Well, yeah ... but that's not that high a bar to jump over :) I think for an online avatar experience to work it is going to have to be good and look good... Dark age of Camelot is the closest to the right thing so far graphically. But yes, I think things are going to have to look as good as Xbox or PS2 in order to capture the interest widely.

"The way that you use Poser is great. I love hearing about folks with deep production projects trying to get the "little tool that could" do what they need it to do. If it doesn't fulfill that, you should move on to character studio or another product that meets your needs, really. We can't be character studio. And the first step of Pro Pack hosting would have been undeliverable if it held parameter level control- for the future though,it's becoming a justifiable expense."

And we are for some things. Again, Poser is becoming more of a prototyping application for us... we can design our characters and clothing and then get a modeler to make us a more CS compatible version that we can animate in Max. It's a cool workflow and it looks like a winner for us. But it would be really cool if we could make more use of our investment in Poser stuff for longer into the lifespan.

I am VERY interested in the idea of a more complete Pro pack plug in system - something like that could, once again, help companies like mine keep our poser stuff a lot longer - and that gives us a greater incentive to support those vendors here and at Daz that are the economic driving force of the Poser community.

I am glad to hear that AvLab can target different back ends... that is helpful to know.

I don't mean to make it sound like you guys are not smart - you are. I just think there is a wave cresting that could propel Poser into many more places - and that that will do a lot for the thriving cottage industry that is the Poser community. This can be done in a way that won't hurt the consumer level Poser folks.

Sounds like a winner.