I guess the big question that hasn't been answered much is how much power Poser 5 requires to perform all these wonderful tasks.

I'm building a dedicated workstation for Poser and going the dual cpu route. Will Poser 5 benefit from a dual cpu computer or is it an overkill?

And secondly, will network rendering be supported?

Dual processors won't be supported. There have been a few posts from CL employees indicating this, and I believe Steve Cooper has now said this as well. Network rendering also seems unlikely. Bill

Correct about the dual processor support, we aren't going to be able to offer it in P5. Network rendering is on the near horizon for us. Firefly is well suited for it.

Would the ability to Network render be able to be added to P5 though an upgrade patch? Also, mind finding a copy of the box & looking up what the listed recommended specs are for CPU, RAM, etc... I still don't know if I should be saving for just P5 or if I have to buy a new computer first.

Thanks a lot for shedding some light on this :-)

Website is being prepped for take-off. All the answers you seek will be delivered in one handy location. ETA on the website? 08-06-02

snicker I like the picture Steve. Rather prophetic ;)

Hmmm, wonder what the postage would be to get that by mail. Think I'll have to borrow my brothers pick-up just to get the proggy home!

Thankfully, the entrance to my cave is large enough to accommodate the box. I shudder to think of the shipping charges, however. Y'know, kupa, the trend in software lately has been smaller packaging. :) Or are we getting a life-sized Posette in the box?

LD, my money is on a life-sized NVIATWAS ;P

This is like when I was a kid waiting for Christmas, Poser5 is all I think about. :) Niles

I wanna know how is I gonna get that size cd in my size cd drive... sheesh ;) Helen

a cd wedgie might help

LOL @ kupa and the team! If you guys still have a sense of humor this close to release, that box ought to be celebrating YOU! I'm also looking at all those nicely lighted hands and fingers... professional distraction, you know. And Larry has such nice hairy forearms... texture maps... grow our own... ummm... take this into PhotoShop and swirl the ladies' hair (especially Karen and Tori) to match the box and wind that yellow ribbon out and in a little..... A favor, can you move the sun to the other side next time? It will be easier to meld art and reality if the lighting is aligned. One thing this ought to make obvious to all who have been pressuring you. The CuriousLabs team is a small one. The folks are very creative and very dedicated and have accomplished an amazing amount. Carolly

As you can see by the box, the imminent Poser 5 release is Windows-only. We Mac users...well...we get to stand by and watch for now. Geez....

MARK, I hope the wait isn't very long, but there are some involved Mac mysteries out there for us to solve. Maybe Apple will decide that we're worthy of their time and help out with some answers. So far, it's been the cold shoulder.

So is it a waiting game--stand by, some day you'll get P5-- or is there at least a tentative release date? You have to know that we dedicated Poser/Mac users, who represent a larger user-share than the general public PC vs Mac user-base have been as anxious and eager to get our hands on this release as anyone. It's awfully frustrating.

Mac folks better light a fire under Steve Jobs. It's not nice snubbing people who are trying to support your platform. Course, you could always come over to the Dark Side of the Force. Heavy breathing of Darth Gates...

Nice box. Now if I could only get my hands on the contents. I guess that's what they're all saying. Thanks Kupa for feeding us. I was wondering, is a layered workspace on the far or near horizon? Is it even possible? It can't be in 5 otherwise we'd know by now, right? Out of my wish list, that's the only one outstanding. Maybe I should start a Poser 6 wish list. Thanks again. Q

Just wondering why the system requirements for Poser 5 has been avoided so strongly when someone asks that question. Is CL afraid to say what the system requirements will be for running Poser 5? With all that has been said about Poser 5 already, I just don't understand why the system requirements would be that much of a secret. People need to know if they have a computer that will be able to run Poser 5. Without knowing, alot of people might be very dissapointed. Is that why the system requirements have been so secretive and the questions about it avoided? Thanks. Cherokee

Strongly suspect system requirements will be inversely related to user's patience, much like poser 4 is. Most folks don't upgrade because poser (among other programs) won't run, they upgraded because it won't run fast enough.

Cherokee, I agree. My thoughts are, if the specs are too high for a lot of us, we simply won't buy it. I will barely be able to afford the price of P5 itself (and not even right away, either, because I have some real world bills that have to come first), let alone never be able to upgrade my computer. I just bought this one about a year and a half ago and I'm still paying on it. I'm not about to upgrade or buy a new one now. I have limited funds. If the program requires more computer than what I have, I can't buy it. Simple as that. I don't have a money tree growing out in my back yard. There might be a lot of people buying P5, then getting home to find out they can't use it on their existing computer, and if they're like me and can't afford to upgrade the computer, they'll be returning Poser 5 for a refund. I just don't understand all the mystery about Poser 5 in the first place and frankly I'm getting a little tired of it. A little honesty would be nice. Melanie

There may also be some last minute things they're trying to finish for the final version that affect the System Requirements

-or-

They may not have finished all their testing yet.

-or-

They may have a marketing plan with a schedule that works best to keep their business alive

-or-

There may be a combination of factors going on

-or-

They've already told us their priorities (completing the software), they've already told us their going to get the new info on their revised website (ETA 8/6/02), we've seen glimpses of how much work they've been putting into advancements and finally realize why it may have taken so long to get the upgrade. Maybe we're asking things that aren't the most important thing right this minute. [Note: that was not intended as a slam on anyone at all so please forgive me if I sounded like that]

I guess the point is that I've waited this long. I know sooner or later I'll upgrade my computer. I know that, for myself, it's not going to really make a difference whether I know the system requirements today or in two weeks. I'll probably be able to run Poser 5 on my existing maching but just not do some of the new things very quickly. I can live with that because that's the way things have been ever since I got my first computer. There's always reason to want something faster. I will never stop needing to upgrade to a bigger, faster machine. I will probably never be able to do it as quickly as I'd like.

It's possible that some of you have personal finance decisions that have to be made right away so I don't blame you for wanting to know.

I'm just glad something's coming at all.
[The first time I participated in the forums here, my questions were based on the concern that CL was even still in business considering the economy. I was very releived to find that they were still around.]

I really appreciate how it can feel like we're holding back because there's a problem, but I assure you that the reason is timing. There will inevitably be hundreds of questions that will come roilling into our email boxes in a deluge, the moment we go live with the full picture. When we choose to go live is really critical. And honestly, we don't have anyone that can deal with that magnitude of info requests until next week. The person that is handling almost all that information (Tori the angel) is currently managing the external beta program, a handful unto itself, the re-do of our website, privacy license issues, eula issues, product management support, and as well as day to day sales and customer support issues. She will be prepared to address the mail next week, once the website goes live, but the most important step we can take to making her efforts effective to to have as much of the information as we can in one concise location. The photo above shows pretty much the full-time core team that delivers Poser. There are a few critical folks in Ireland, another another couple of engineers in Germany, and the external Poser community members helping out with content development. Everyone is doing multiple jobs to put this together, and we have to really careful to not have an avalanche get in anyone's way. About system requirements- Are you going to need a top of line machine to run P5? No, something from the last two years will likely do just fine. Anything exotic like dual processors or special cards? No, but Poser always likes lots of RAM, especially with a few hi-res figures and a couple of 3000x3000 pixel texture maps.... (btw, each 3000x3000 pixel map eats up about 100 meg of RAM!) Bottomline- Are you going to want fastest machine you can get? I sure would.

Bob, I can run newteks Lightwave3D 7.5 Cinema 4DXL 7.3 with dynamics , pyrocluster and flowtracer and Discreet combustion2 on my current hardware configuration Poser5 does not even use hardware acceleration so im confident i will be able to run it.

Wolf, If I remember correctly, you're still using a beige G3 right? I have no problems with Lightwave 6.5 or After Effects 5 on my 350 Mhz G4 but I haven't tried any of the advanced features yet. What's kind of interesting for now is that my Poser scenes render faster using the Poser for Lightwave Plug-in than they do in Poser. I'm lusting after a new computer for home anyway. I'm seriously considering a new iMac now that I can get a certain audio functionality via firewire instead of having to install a card. On the other hand, the dual processor G4 at the office is so nice cause I can do other things while I render. Even without dual processor support in P5, I'd love to have one. Regardless of whether it's for P4 or P5, faster and more RAM is always good. And an extra processor (with an OS that supports it) is Great! Kupa, Thanks for confirming my thoughts. I guess this means my psychotic powers are still functioning. Maybe I should go ahead with my plans to develop a Psychotic Friends Network where people call nekkid Vicky (or the P5 chick) in the temple and she'll answer their questions (with my help, of course). Hey, wait a minute, I heard what you just thought. Stop it. ;-)

Kupa: Poser always likes lots of RAM, especially with a few hi-res figures and a couple of 3000x3000 pixel texture maps.... (btw, each 3000x3000 pixel map eats up about 100 meg of RAM!) Oops, I read that as possibly bad news. The implication here may be (not definite) that P5 will still load textures into its application memory space. At that level of memory use, it will only be able to support about 20 or so unique (and less with 4Kx4K) textures before it starts getting close to the logical limit (for a 32 bit app and OS) of 2-3GB (virtual + physical RAM). Considering that some P4 characters already use several maps of this size, that might well limit the number of uniqely textured characters in a scene to a small number. Given that many P4 users have, in the years since its release, pushed the app far beyond its original design specifications, sooner or later P5 users are going to start trying these sorts of renders (probably sooner). Only speculation of course (apologies Steve for jumping on this), but this possibility did occur to me a few days ago, as I recently hit the same problem myself. In my case, I dumped the images into temporary files (eating up disk space instead) and relied on the W32 file buffers to aleviate the extra disk thrashing, without eating into the application memory. It actually wasn't that bad for rendering type scenarios. The cost is of course extra processing (rendering) time, but without pushing things to the limit, it didn't seem to be too great an overhead (ie.a small percentage). I can imagine that the first thing I might be doing with P5 is running it under the system monitor. That makes me a really sad individual doesn't it? Sorry guys, you've just got to accept that there always will be a few of us with half empty glasses ;-o Bill

Bill, I'm delighted to hear you've got a glass! [said Bobasaur with an almost annoying sense of optimism]

Well, I've got a couple of choices for getting this new version....save for a new computer so I can run Poser5 which I can't get if I buy a new computer, or save for Poser 5 which I won't be able to run on my current computer, or rob a bank or hustle on some street corner to get enough money to buy both.

Hey, this street corner's already taken. Find your own.

• watches, perplexed, as passers-by run screaming into open traffic *

Well Draco, you take that corner and I'll take this one..OK.

....Late to this thread, but I LOVE that pic with the box!

Kupa, That picture is unbelievable! The realism you can get out of P5 will be unmatched. I mean ... those faces look real! And to think you can have 13 unique people a box prop, cars, tiled ground, at least two buildings, and some foliage ... WHEW! Look at all those clothes, and white panties to boot! And look at those shadows! There's got to be some great lighting in there! Finally, real sun! And you don't need a special computer?!?! Here's something else curious. Only one person wearing a watch? I guess 9-5 doesn't exist at CL! How long until it's Tuesday?

BAM, I'm still chuckling after my second read of your post. That's a hall of fame reply. I'm going to have this image and your post printed and framed. Thank you for today's bright spot. BTW, those are my wife's whities. Kupa

...and I thought I was the only one who intimately knew the taste of his own foot....

Steve, I wasn't going to say whose those were. ;^) Since she was the one keeping you to a schedule when you dropped by here, that deduction might have been made by those folks who think in little jumps. BAM, Foot tastes better with slivered ginger. Alternate bites with a slice of mandarin orange and 1/4 walnut wrapped with fresh spinach for a delightfully unique summer treat. Carolly

Carolly, I'll probably end up trying that sooner than you think. ;-)

Chomp, Chomp, Slllip, chomp, chomp. Being a Cajun at heart I just added a little Tabasco. Mmmm tastes good!