IMHO, Poser 5 is probably worth the money in the long run. But, it seriously needs a patch to address existing bugs and usability issues to avoid alienating new, prospective fans or really pissing off the Poser faithful who have all waited so long, hoped for so much, pre-ordered without the slightest hesitation and basically kept the faith with Curious Labs all this while. This is Curious Labs first outing with a major release/upgrade of Poser and they certainly cannot afford to screw it up by eroding the goodwill that they have built over time with the Poser community.

But I'm (still) patient and trust that Curious Labs will (eventually) deliver an exemplary product. Heck, I've been using the software through its various incarnations from when it was Fractal Designer's incipient Poser v1.00, so I can appreciate where it is today.

It is also my hope that Curious Labs and DAZ may still rise above whatever current issues they face and find a way to work together, for the sake of Poser and the community that have supported the both of them.

Meanwhile, I will keep both Poser 4 AND Poser 5 on my current notebook (IBM T30, WIN XP Pro, 1.8 GHz P4, 512 DDR SDRAM, 40GB HD, ATI Mobility Radeon 7500, 16 MB video RAM). I will continue to create new work with Poser 4 and learn/experiment with Poser 5 by seeing how that work translates to its new features. Hopefully, at some point when Poser 5 is "fixed", I will be able to make the switch completely and retire Poser 4.

Earth to Curious Labs: The clock is ticking.

Kupa mentioned ina previous post that a patch would be ready in a week or two (as I recall). That was last weekend. Here. Put on this patience cap and join the rest of us. :-)

Had P5 for near a week both at work and home. And don't seem to have any issues except user ones. Perhaps its time to clean your system. BTW WinXP Pro (ALL PATCHES and SP1) 2.2GHz P4 1G RAM 40GB HD, Geforec4 440 Go 32MB, - Laptop 2.53 P4 w/512K L2 ATC - 533 FSB, 2G RAM, (2) 120GB HD, Geforcd4 TI-4600G, Twin 18" LCD Digital Flats

ceba: Yes, they're the specs you need to run P5 at any speed greater than slow. :) I have a dual 1GHz P3, 1.3GB RAM, 50GB HD (How did you afford that laptop? What was it, like $4000?) I'm using W2K Pro and there are definitely issues beyond 'cleaning system'. My install is fresh, as in reformat and reinstall, and only two months old. All drivers, patches, service packs (SP3), and firmware so uptodate that they haven't been released yet. ;0) Loading Hires Don crashes P5 every time on my system, the interface is dying on occassion, and things aren't totally working or correct (invisible material image maps that suddenly appear, eventually; material room can't decide on a compact scene display or the full one; parameters/properties palette keeps appearing when and where it shouldn't; some darn error appears at startup every once in a while; new dial values sometimes take 20-30 seconds to react). Things that I donot see in P4 Pro on the same system. Kuroyume

Laptop is a Toshiba Satellite 1955-S801 Upgraded the Memory and XP to Pro - Checkout the DETACHABLE wireless keyboard and 16" dispaly ESUP: $2,399.00 Equipped with an Intel Pentium 4 Processor4 2.20GHz, 16" SXGA Toshiba Personal Theatre active matrix display (1280 x 1040), 512MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM, NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go graphics controller w/32MB DDR external VRAM video memory, DVD/CD-RW multifunction drive, 40GB1 Hard drive, 10/100 ethernet, V.90/56K modem, Wireless Detachable Keyboard and Mouse, Lotus SmartSuite Millennium Edition and Windows XP Home Edition

I'm on win2k pro sp3. No problems. 1.4g amd with asus a7m266MB (yes the problem one) and 512 ddr. P5 runs just fine. Moving around in the workarea with P5 figures is a bit notchy, with P4 figures, its as fast as greased lightening.

"Those who don't learn from history, are doomed to repeat it."

We are working on a patch to correct both application and content issues. Like Pro Pack, we will produce regular updates as needed. This first patch will be available within the next week and change. I don't have an exact date, sorry about that. Our beta program was an involved process with many diverse users and internal testing as well. We have a large external tester base to expose the code to various hardware set-ups and users with various Poser interests; unfortunately some bugs don't show up until the application is used in the large user base. Steve Cooper

Thanks Kupa. Despite my complaints above, as a computer programmer and user for nearly fifteen years, I understand that any large change, improvement, or additions to an application are going to be fraught with unknowns and problems that'll only be weeded out by testing in the real world. I have to commend you guys on a great improvement overall. Although I have had Poser 4 Pro Pack since May and now Poser 5, I tally my total use at less than a month due to other engagements over the past three months or so. There is much to learn and master, but with your and the excellent Renderosity people's help, it should be mostly painless and definitely fun! Kuroyume

Kupa, Please don't misconstrue my above comment as a slam against you or CS. I've been a fan of yours, and Poser since Version 3, back in the MegaGreedations days. When they had the MCPoser mailing list up, you and I even had some discussions via private e-mail, so I really DO know some of the kind of crap you have to deal with. Now AND then. As you guys were preparing Poser 5, I intentionally didn't bring up anything about right click menues on THIS forum. (maybe you remember me, now?) Platform wars suck, and are a total waste of time. (You can thank me by sending me a free copy of Poser 5! Snicker!) I think that most people around here are aware of the 'teething stages' that Poser 3, 4, and Pro Pack, have all gone through after their initial release. I personally have come to the understanding that it's pretty much "the way it goes", and it shouldn't be the big-fat-hairy-deal that so many people are making out of it. Most of them took an educated chance that it would be different this time. It wasn't. So what!? GET OVER IT! (Or ask for a refund for somthing that, deep down inside, you know damn good and well you want to keep!) I'm sure all of you at CS will have Poser 5 sorted out before too long. That's the was it's always been in the past. And, same as in the past, that's when you'll get my money. Promise. I sincerely want the best for you and CS. I hope you pull through, cuz if you don't it's really gonna suck, and I'm gonna feel really bad about it. Norbet AKA: Tim Zane P.S. -- Get some sleep, dude!

I'd bet that P5 has less bugs and has had more beta testing than anything EVER released by M$ Since it was built to run on 4 different versions of windows it's not suprising that there are some occasionally nasty bugs in the works.

Kuroyume, That is an unusual set of symptoms you've got. If you were on Win98 or WinME the fix would be to upgrade to Win2K or XP, but you're running Win2K, so that isn't it. I'm just speculating here: Sounds like something is causing Poser 5 to think it is receiving user commands from you that you aren't giving it. If you have a spare mouse and keyboard around, it might be worth a few minutes of time to reboot your computer with those to see if the symptoms improve, what the heck? If you aren't seeing problems in any other application, then I wonder what could cause that? I'd try anything that helps Poser not bog down - such as "Display/Tracking/Fast Tracking". I'd also exit any background applications, such as MSN Messenger. Oh, and check the manufacturer of your display card or graphics chip, to make sure you have the latest driver. (That's a long shot - I'm trying to think of anything that might interfere with Poser receiving regular slices of time to see user input.) -- ToolmakerSteve

Most have been enumerated by others, but, as you note, in Win98 and ME. Mouse and keyboard should be okay. Will check the mouse settings to see if the sampling rate is too high or low. No problems in other applications. Fast tracking increases performance, but not errors or slow dial settings. The only background applications that I have running are my wireless network card config and Norton Antivirus. Everything else is standard W2K services. Norton may not like it, but I'll see if there is any improvement after unloading its services. As I stated in the previous message, all drivers are up to date. The video driver update was released 9/12 and was installed on 9/13. Since my machine is dual processing, there should be plenty of processing time slices to go around. Anyway, these problems only occur within P5 and not other apps, including P4. I'll fiddle with some settings and also wait for the P5 patch soon to be released. Kuroyume

Kuroyume, As an application programmer, it is hard for me to picture how an application could have those problems under Win2K. Poser 5 must be trashing its own memory area. Does Poser run fine for a while before problems occur? Hmm, 1.3GB RAM? I'd try pulling out memory chips down to 512 MB RAM as an experiment. In case Poser 5 is exercising your memory in a way that Pro Pack and other apps you run don't. That is, I'm trying to lessen the possibility that somehow its your hardware. I know you won't want to LEAVE that RAM out, but knowledge is power ;) P.S. Do you have access to some other PC that you could install Poser 5 on, to see if you have similar problems there? -- ToolmakerSteve

Huh, I just had Poser 5 hang simply by alt-tabbing to a wordpad document where I was typing in each step as I did it. This happened while waiting for Cloth Room to "Calculate Drape". Running on XP Pro, 1.4 GHz Athlon, 512 MB RAM, with DSL modem. No wait, it didn't hang: the progress bar had just failed to update when I switched back to Poser. By the time I had typed the lines above here, Poser was happy again, and had draped the dress fine. I was about to delete this post, but then I thought someone else might benefit from the success in simply leaving Poser for awhile to see if it recovers... -- ToolmakerSteve

sshaw: I will have access to another machine in a couple days. Just waiting on the processor to arrive. It runs fine before problems occur except with Hires Don, it happens rather quickly. Kuroyume