Jackson..interesting thread on the protection... As far a cracks...I don't usually use them myself, but I sometimes wonder what diff it really makes if you own the software anyway... if it makes it work better, or in many instances, defeats the CD in tray scheme, etc...why not ?

Looks like a pretty concise analysis, CyberStretch. Nice job. "1. CL over-hyped the release of P5 by providing too many promises, positive posts, and assurances prior to release; despite the fact they knew the release would be buggy; causing unrealistic expectations from the users about the capabilities of P5." Of course they did. Going by the posts that Kupa made [The "we had to release, we had employees sleeping on couches and working unpaid" etc posts], they obviously felt that they had no choice financially except to release now after hyping to generate as many sales as possible. Never mind what it would do to their customer base, and never mind that it wasn't precisely equitable treatment of loyal customers... "We need the money, so we'll get all the sales we can regardless of the condition of the release" syndrome. So much for community relations. I suspect the timing of the promotional threads had as much to do with deterioating relations between CL and Daz and a desire to spike Daz 3D as much as hyping Poser 5, but I'm a cynic. "2. CL included the registration scheme; despite the community's prior adversity to such an idea; causing the community to revisit a heated discussion which, most likely, cost CL customers the first time around - as well as the second." Ah. But you forget... they had a "team of scientists" designing an uncrackable scheme, and accountants pursuing x amount of dollars lost to warez. What are disgruntled customers in the face of that? ;] "3. CL accepted pre-order funds before the product shipped; despite the precedent by most companies of withholding payment until the product is shipped; causing users to question their financial stability, which proved to be unstable per admission by CL." Reffer to "1)". Actually, CL admitted to that financial instability during the Poser 4 Amnesty threads, a number of months back. No indication was ever given that they'd progressed to a less unstable financial condition in the intervening time, nor any reason to believe they had. "5. CL failed to address many known bugs in P4 and P4PP within the release of P5; despite many P4/P4PP bug reports from users; causing users to surmise that the new features were merely add-ons over and above the P4/P4PP code base." They failed to address those bugs adequately in the 3 years following the poser 4 release, "working ful time on redesigning Poser 5 from the ground up" cited as the reason. The new features being add-ons to the basic Poser 4 codes is not a surmise: a look at P5, and a read of the 3rd party software contributors confirms that the render engine, material nodes, face room, and cloth rooms are 3rd party add-ons from Pixels 3D, Size8 Software, and Face-Gen. Lisenced plugin modules, not "new coding".

TalleyJC... "eyelashes transparency look like doo-doo no matter what I try. The coolest transmapped ponytail (kozaburo/Yamato) on the planet (the one that I use on V2 as a standard) shows the transparency over her face like she was an X wing pilot with her visor down." ...I'm not sure what you've been trying as a fix, but it's pretty straight forward... On anything that uses a transmap, make sure that 'Transparency Edge' (used to be labeled 'Tansparency Min') is set to 1.0. In P4, you only had to set the Max value, so many old MAT files only set that.

"The new features being add-ons to the basic Poser 4 codes is not a surmise..." The reason that I stated it was a "surmise" is that I do not have P5 and could not verify it personally. We seem to have some programmers within the community that could, possibly, check the code to see if there is a substantial amount of the base code that exists within both P4 and P5. The reappearance of P4 bugs strongly suggests, if not proves, this to be true without proper investigation.

Re: CL financial stability, and the dough many of us have shelled out for P5 AND the copy-protection... I had a quick peek at Pace's site. Aside from stating that in no way with their copy-protection scheme ever cause any problems, even when different programs use different versions of the scheme (honest!) their FAQ's do have the occasional interesting comment. E.G. How do I unlock PACE protected software produced by an apparently defunct software company? While PACE Anti-Piracy does provide companies with copy protection tools and the ability to authorize customers, it does not have the customer databases of these companies to validate End User (the consumer) authenticity, nor does it have the legal right to distribute authorization codes for the products of these companies. Furthermore, while the copy protection implemented is made with its tools, PACE Anti-Piracy does not have the codes to unlock products for the End User. If you have bought a product in a box, we suggest returning it to the place of purchase for a refund. Copy protection is a topic that is fervently, almost religiously, debated. PACE Anti-Piracy provides tools to software publishers to protect software from theft, and these tools have successfully serviced many happy clients. The tools help software companies to stay healthy by allowing these companies to concentrate on their core products; however, it is the duty of these companies to stay in business and support their customers by providing authorizations. PACE works diligently to qualify our customers as healthy and able software vendors and do our best to advise them of how to best use our products. We are sorry that we can not be more of a help, but hopefully this helps to explain our position in these matters. So - if CL do go "legs in the air" anyone left holding a copy of P5 will be able to use it for as long as the hard drive they're using is both functional and in their computer. so no hasty upgrading, y'hear?

While I am the first person to admit this release coudl have been handled better - and no doubt P5 still has it's share of bugs, including some apparently fatal ones on some systems, I just couldn't avoid commenting on some of this.

Dark_Raven - "Actually EricfSD that is what I mean by CL using bad programming practices when you creat a program you dont program it for the most powerful system you deleveop it for the weakest possiable because you have to realize with as fast as computer technology changes it is almost impossiable to anticpate what computers will be able to do while your developing the program so if CL programmed it in that fashion maybe they should start by reading there programming 101 books again"

Ummm... no :)

For some types of programs the lowest common denominator is a good idea - but for many types of programs it is simply irrelevant. Poser5 is a system that demands high end hardware... the nature of ray tracing and cloth/hair simulation are going to set a lower boundary of what is useable and there isn't much point in wasting time below that.

For instance, it would be silly of them to try and cram this into a 128meg P3 at 200mhz/ Even though many P3 machines are still in use.

• When you develop software you look at several factors to decide this:
• What machine does the majority of your target audience have?
• What machine will that audience be willing to upgrade to?
• What can you do to accommodate lower machines without sacrificing core features that will define the product in the marketplace.

Many games, for example, have very demanding requirements. While they would have more eligible users with less ambitious hardware needs they would also sacrifice too many features to be commercially successful.

With 900+mhz machines way, way under 600$ these days it is not a critical issue to try and make multi hundred dollar software that caters to out of date hardware. The vast majority of those who will spend the money for Poser5 also have machines that can run it.

** Dark_Raven - "If I told you I could develop a 3d game such as Quake III in Visual Basic rather then c++ you probably think Im full of St well guess what? It can be done VB can be use to develop High Speed 3D games compariable to any game created in C++ and here is why? Windows API Function can speed up any type of program this being said to say CL cant program p5 to work on less then high tech systems is full of crap im assuming they did it in C++ or actually C cause very few programmers actually use the "++" part of C for verious reason which would be to long to explain anyways"

No, I wouldn't think you were full of it (well, OK, I probably would) - but you also wouldn't be telling the entire truth. Yes, you can write a game that runs fast in Visual Basic - because all you are doing is calling functions that do the actual math for you that were written in C++, C and ASM. That's what OpenGL, DirectX and Direct3D do for you ... heck, you could possibly write a fairly fast game in the macros inside word.

So yeah, you could do it in Visual Basic, with the help of a 150,000$ game engine (the UT engine, Quake engine or Lithtech... maybe NetImmerse). I don;t think at that point your use of Visual Basic is much of a factor in top of all that C++ and C code. Of course, Visual Basic.NET is a whole different story, compiling nicely the same way C# does.

Now, to extrapolate from there to the idea that "Windows API Function" can speed up "any program" is a bit of a mis-statement in many respects.

1. All windows programs use substantial portions of the Windows API - including poser
2. There is NO Windows API function for ray tracing, hair simulation and mesh deformation in wither the Win32 api or the .NET api.  If you can find one... by all means let us know.
3. Even pretending for a minute that there WAS an API for mesh deformation, that wouldn't make it magically run fast on older hardware.

I am a little confused about your assertion that "few" programmers use C++ as it is currently the most uses development language for large projects. Including games.

JHoagland - Why doesn't Poser support DirectX or OpenGL? Every other professional-level 3-D software does. This alone could cut down on Poser's memory usage AND speed up render time.

I agree, Poser absolutely SHOULD give us a DirexctX/OpenGL mode for the preview window. This would really help and is a tremendous option in software like Max. As the cards get better and better the DirectX preview can do lighting, shaders and bump mapping.

It would not, however, speed up render times at all.

who3d - So - if CL do go "legs in the air" anyone left holding a copy of P5 will be able to use it for as long as the hard drive they're using is both functional and in their computer. so no hasty upgrading, y'hear?

Well, since there is a crack available for Poser5 I find it hard to get very worried about being "stuck" without the ability to use Poser5 in the future.

A lot of people are angry and upset - and many of them probably have good reason. Poser5 could have been a unmitigated success for CL and it has turned into a moderately successful release that has caused it's own share of problems. I am sure no one is more upset about that than the folks at CL.

But, some things are true:

• Poser5 has some important features that many of us are finding very useful and a definite improvement.
• Poser5 is stable and reliable on the majority of users machines
• Dynamic cloth, hair and the shader have dramatically opened up what can be created in Poser5 and as freestuff and vendor items catch up with the abilities we will see some really outstanding things
• At it's price point, Poser is the most efficient way to create, render and modify characters

Am I "blindly loyal" to CL? Hell no.
Do I think Poser5 is perfect? Hell no.

But neither of those things means I shouldn't comment on rampant speculation and inaccuracies about technology or software.

.

Soulhunter, I agree with 3 of your 4 points. Where do you get your information for the 2nd bullet? I highly doubt its accuracy. And here are some other truths: 1. CL has been lying to us for years. 2. CL did almost nothing to improve the core Poser program. 3. The small improvements that were made (i.e. the Library system) could have and should have been made available to P4 users years ago. But instead CL kept it from us so it would be another incentive to buy Poser 5. 4. CL knew (or should have known) that the Pace protection scheme is known throughout the industry to cause problems for end users. But they used it anyway.

I think people here have forgotten one very important thing.

The features that were added to Poser 5 (licensed or not) were requested by "US" the poser community.

They went over the top IMO to give us what we asked for:

Raytracing
Material Shaders
Hair
Cloth
Dynamics

So don't say that CL doesn't care about what we want because they've already proven that they DO.

-JH.

I don't see the problem. Software can be Processor specific with regards to type e.g. Pentium/Pentium II/III or IV or whatever. The actual clock speed of your processor should effect only that. The speed. I use audio production software which places far heavier demands on the processor than any 3D app ever could because everything has to happen real time or you can't work. The same does not apply to rendering in the least. I use a PIII running soft synths, a sequencer and an audio editor simultaneously with no hastle at all. Of course a software publisher may recommend a minimum speed it feels will be acceptably efficient to it's licensees, but you shouldn't have any trouble at all using P5. I'd like to recommend a new forum topic specifically for P5 'drama', the pro and con rantings of which seem to have drowned out the purpose of this one.

dialyn: Good suggestion! They could have had a Poser5 Light Edition with enhancements and fixes for Poser4, but without all the hoopla they added to Poser5. For instance, improved animations with multiple cameras used in one scene, improved standard characters (Don, Judy, etc.), and not have the face, hair, cloth and other rooms. Or even better, the Light Edition would be an improved Poser 4, and its companion CD would be like the Pro Pack that includes all the extra features that Poser 5 has. The Poser 5 Room Pack would be for people with higher systems, and those without can stick to the Enhanced Poser 4 version. And it would be available for both MAC and PC.

Soulhunter, Im sorry I think you miss my point but in away you kinda of explained it better first off about programming for weaker systems you kinda of stated what I was trying to point out that you program for the weakest system possible meaning how old of a system can you use with out compermising the purpose of the program. also I believe I stated in another post about not sure what type of progamming language they actually used, and the fact that a program for 3d graphics proabably demands a little more performance power then other application but still you do have to take into account what type of system you average user will be using Second of all all your right yuou still have to use direct X direct 3d, direct Draw with Visual Basic as the same with C++, but the common factor that brings visual basic up to C++ is the windows API, they both have the ability to use those functions, and they dont really do any math they just allow you to call the function that were use to design windows program since you using windows those function are avaiable to you and dosent have to search as hard for them as it would if you were using standeerd Active X function, anyways this all klnda of minute point since logically Poser 5 was not done in visual basic and since I read it dosent use direct x anyways to clearify my point about c++ What I meant was people that program in C++ dont use the ++ part of C++ meaning basicly they are still programming in C and the reason why is once you start to use the ++ part of C++ you run the risk of slowing down your programs speed that is what I meant as far ss Visual Basic.Net for now that program kinda of in the same catagory as Poser 5 to many bugs and problems with it most companies refuse to switch to using visual basic.net but I better hold my tongue on that one cause it seems they will be adding it to my classes for my bachlars degree so looks like Im going to have an additional 10 weeks of school tact on to my degree anyways now that I ramble on for a bit again I have one question that seems to bother me now so basicly I have a very good video card dose this mean its worthless when using Poser, as far as the direct x and open gl ability?

Afraid so, pretty much. I'm running an Accel Eclipse on my main workstation [a premium card in it's day], and it's worthless for poser use re: direct x and ogl. It shines however in apps like Studio VIZ and others that take advantage of it's features.

Dark Raven, I have to agree with you on the C++ part. Even I, a veteran C programmer, learned C++ many years ago and quickly put it to disuse. :) The problem with C++ is it is too much a mish-mosh of typical old-school programming language and OOP language which just makes using one or the other a tiresome business while degrading performance in the latter case. For real OOP support, I use Java and more recently Python. Conversely, one would hope that CL has alot of assembly language in their code for speed. Although highly optimized C (good algorithms, hand optimization, and possibly compiler optimizations (not recommended)) can be nearly as fast, it will never be as fast as well-written assembly code, bless the little programmers who can master coding in it. This may be a reason for a declaration of minimum support: compiler options or directives that are only supported by certain processors (in age and configuration). Nonetheless, OpenGL and DirectX have been around for some time, almost every 3D accelerated graphics card utilizes one, the other, or both, and are well supported in every major OS. So why couldn't CL, while "recoding from scratch" (eh-humm) add this support? It would not bar too many users and would increase performance beyond belief making it worth the effort. Kuroyume

Actually I tend to regard the "lowest common denominator" issue as an ethnocentric one (US-UK) for almost as long as there has been computer generated 3D stuff in games, the Brits have historically lacked access to hardware acceleration, (starting with cheap Sinclair computers.) So they built tight code instead, which benefited them when hardware got better. The Americans by contrast, always had access to better hardware, so they used that, which lead to the great progammer exodus of the 80's, as it became cheaper to write better code than build new hardware. This worried the UK government so much they refused to let you go if you got a "free" university education from the state. Europe yes, America no. I had a mate that took an embalming course to get around it :) "Wing Commander 3" famously had two reviews in the UK at time of release. it got 90% if you had a "cutting egde" P133 and 64Mb of memory, but only 60% if you had a more normal '486 DX4 and 32Mb. These days, while the processor continues to creep forward, the GFX cards are bounding ahead. The chip on the ATI Radeon 9700 is twice the size of the latest AMD processor and requires a seperate power source as the AGP slot doesn't supply enough juice :) Even hardware constrained games consoles, long the preserve of the tight loop, are powered by the latest GFX hardware, my cube has a "Powered by ATI" sticker on the front, and rival Nvidia powers my Xbox. But Poser? It has remained stubbornly single threaded and memory intensive, using a GFX card soley as a display device through the OS. Some people here have actually made poser faster by turning hardware GFX acceration off! Yes folks, our beloved software is an anachronism! :) later jb

The only reason why I can think of why CL dose not support Direct X and open gl is because so many other programs, like 3d studio max; which im having problems with this plug in which i posted about a few min ago on another topic, allow you to import poser things into those other programs so maybe CL figures if they want to use open gl or direct x let them export there work from poser into those programs and use it that way...who knows im just glade I didnt buy poser 5 it looks good on its screen shots and even in the last issue of renderosity magaizine but after all this I think im going to stay with my Poser 4 Propack after all I have only had it for a year so maybe time I get to be an expert CL or who ever they might be by then will have all this mess fixed up and I will consider buying there product. Dont get me wrong I think they have a good product they just dropped the ball so to speak on this one it happens to the best of them think about Bill Gates when he was demostrating Windows 98 in front of 1000 of people talking about how stable it was and what happened during his demostration the system crashed but they recovered from this and eventually I think CL wil as well Dark_Raven

-- They could really improve things performance-wise by implementing OpenGL Hardware-based Rendering. We could get a few frames per second instead of a frame every few minutes. Their Tech Support has indicated to me that they will consider it. -- I wouldn't hold my breath. They've been "considering" it for years now. Holding our breath may be our only hope now, however Firefly has been a tremendous help in increasing our lung capacity.

Jinkies, I've created a monster!!! I've been reading for 40 minutes (starting at around post #30 from last night)! I'd like to thank everyone for the support and ideas (MaxxArcher - I'll look into the shadow bios idea). The info regarding the anti-piracy protection was interesting reading also. If it's as unstable as some have said, maybe it's a good thing I couldn't get P5 to run as far as registration! ;) I guess I should have followed a friend's rule regarding software - Never buy a ".0" release; at least not right away. I'll be adopting a "wait and see attitude now - if people are having problems with 1.8GHz+ PCs, there's no point in me rushing out to get a new machine (I'll get my stereo for now). I wish you all the best with P5 and here's to hoping CL can fix things up so we can get back to what it is we're all really here for... Cheers, Bonzai Gopher

Soulhunter - good points and very good grammar etc. (better than my posts anyway). although I feel Dark_Raven has some excelent points too, I must admit that I'm actually mostly in favour of P5 (despite the hassle it's caused me so far) and hope it continues to behave itself now I've registered. The one point I would raise against your post is that I don't want to rely on or even have a crack for P5 in order to use it in future - I want to be able to use the program until I choose not to (or not to be able to). This might be down to the installation of Windows XS 2006 (historically OS' have occasionally "broken" old applications) or my giving up on 3D/Poser/whatever... but I want to be able to choose to run a legal instance of the program I've paid for or not, regardless of CL's finances. If a hardware failure alone (death of a hard drive - or maybe even re-partitioning??) can/could prevent me from running a legal copy in the future, and be forced to try and find and use this crack, then I'm not a happy bunny on that aspect.

Dark_Raven - "What I meant was people that program in C++ dont use the ++ part of C++ meaning basicly they are still programming in C and the reason why is once you start to use the ++ part of C++ you run the risk of slowing down your programs speed"

We have radically different industry experiences you and I :) I have found that every non trivial project makes fairly heavy use of the object features of C++. There are dramatic gains to be had from a good OOP architecture .. and there are no random slowdowns to consider, C++ can be a very deterministic language speed wise.

kuroyume0161 - "Conversely, one would hope that CL has alot of assembly language in their code for speed. Although highly optimized C (good algorithms, hand optimization, and possibly compiler optimizations (not recommended)) can be nearly as fast, it will never be as fast as well-written assembly code, bless the little programmers who can master coding in it."

This was true for a while, a fairly long time ago IMHO:)

Modern processor systems use complex pipelines and the optimizations for them are extremely complex. It is a rare thing these days for any code to be run as it was written... the processor re-orders instructions, profiles that code and speculatively runs future code for branch prediction. This will only get worse as hyperthreading becomes more common.

While it is theoretically possible for a human to make the appropriate optimizations in ASM for short (very short) loops - overall the compiler will do a much better job of it than humans will ... and it will do that job best when given the additional information provided by higher level language syntaxes.

(unknown author) "They could really improve things performance-wise by implementing OpenGL Hardware-based Rendering. We could get a few frames per second instead of a frame every few minutes. Their Tech Support has indicated to me that they will consider it."

Actually, the render times for full frames would be completely unaffected.

who3d - "If a hardware failure alone (death of a hard drive - or maybe even re-partitioning??) can/could prevent me from running a legal copy in the future, and be forced to try and find and use this crack, then I'm not a happy bunny on that aspect."

I do understand the concern. I guess for me, by the time any of that happens there will be something else available to me and Poser5 will have redeemed it's price for my uses.

Jackson - Soulhunter, I agree with 3 of your 4 points. Where do you get your information for the 2nd bullet? I highly doubt its accuracy.

I got it from the various forums for Poser I frequent and from discussions with others I work with on 3D and animation projects as well as discussions with some of those who beta tested Poser5. It is a personal opinion arrived at from anecdotal evidence... just like he opinion that Poser is unstable in the majority.

Jackson - "The small improvements that were made (i.e. the Library system) could have and should have been made available to P4 users years ago. But instead CL kept it from us so it would be another incentive to buy Poser 5."

I doubt it - I think once CL decided to work on a new version a lot of these things were added to the feature list in planning... as part of a new release. I doubt they existed in stand alone form.