I think this Poser 5, is a shame. It was shipped knowing it has major bugs. I just deleted it from my new work station. I'm not going to even chance messing up my new computer for that patch.(after all I've read in this forum) A program should work on a brand new computer with way over any of the requirements. I refuse to mess with the settings. ***This just brings to my mind that Rip off book Madonna put out way back. The one if you took off plastic wraper, you couldn't get your money back!!!! ****Well you know what they did refund peoples money. This is a defective product. Not happy at all, I just should have drove to Lake Michigan and threw my $189.00 in the lake. Pissed off. Leah

thst makes 2 of us. I unistalled/reinstalled this evening. It all started out great, but have been getting nothing but exception errors all night..they are locking the program so CTRL-ALT-DEL has to be used. Now it won't even render in Firefly...says rendering, but there is no character in the image..just the background...it works perfectly using the P4 renderer in P5. I think this is the last straw.

I was nervous about the patch too and decided to take the plunge. It does run faster. Win2ksp3. I think the people with problems are running ME and possibly have other conflicting programs like EasyCD creator, etc. For me it has been a good experience overall. Though not perfect, I'm still happier with P5 than P4.

I am running Poser 5 on my computer and haven't had any type of issues that I have seen posted. I even installed the patch with no probelm. Although, the rendering is very slow. My system specs: P4 1.2 Win2k Pro with the latest serivce pack. 512 DDIMS G3 Nivida 64MB AGPX2 52X CD ROM DVD Writter 3HD (one for the OS, On for my Graphic Apps, one for DVD Authoring.)

Poser 5 is still worth every penny and more. I had even worse experiences with Maya when I purchased that program. Imagine spending $5000.00 on a product that didnt work for the first year that you owned it. Microsoft has yet to release a product that they didnt have to patch at least 2 times. Macs are a little bit better but not perfect either. Really I dont know of a single product that I have ever purchased that was completely bug free. I too would like to see companies put in a little more effort before they release something, and even push the release date back if they have to. But humans make these products and humans make mistakes. I say cast the first stone if you have never made a mistake in your life. I know it is frustrating paying for something that is not perfect, and I have felt the same frustrations when the program gets stuck on a render, or the head doesnt line up in the pose room. And I know there are some disappointed people that are complaining about the stability of P5 and the integrity of Curious Labs. I just want to say that the program kicks ass, there are features that you would have to spend at least $8,000.00 in another app to get the same results... (Hair, Cloth Dynamics, etc.). Even if you did purchase one of the other apps at a much heavier price tag you still would not be able to produce the same kind of results in the amount of time that you can with P5. The new morph putty tool alone is worth the upgrade. See how many hours it would take you in another program to create a model, texture a model, create the bone structure, and then apply all the morph possibilities that are offered in a single P5 character. You would soon duck your head in shame over your bickering. I know for a fact that Curious Labs is very committed to bringing their customers the best value for the money and they wont stop until the program is stable and until their customers are happy. $189.99 is a drop in the bucket compared to what this program is worth. I know all may not welcome my opinions, but it just drives me crazy to see how critical people are. Enough said ChristianB

Why Why Why when someone has serious problems with Poser 5 does someone else always have to butt in and blame the problems on their machine? Oh, it works fine on my machine, your machine and/or software must be cr*p. It's adding insult to injury. Some community this is. Instead of saying 'sorry' how can we help, blame the user. I've been following these threads for ages now and that upsets me as much as the problems in Poser 5. Every thread, every single thread.

well I have been reading all the posts about poser 5 and I will not buy it. Not with the problems I allready have with my comp. Just putting in a new video and sound card I had to reformat 4 dam times. imagine the pain in the ass it would be to have to re install poser 5 with the codes 4 times in one dam day. my hubby seems to allways mess with something and a simple plug and play issue becomes a mess. what a headache. Plus I use poser for fun and from what i have seen poser 5 looks cool..but I dont really need it. I can do alot of the same things with bryce etc. so guess I am anthor person who wont be buying poser 5. :(

"Imagine spending $5000.00 on a product that didnt work for the first year that you owned it" Apparently I'm not the only person that thinks they own what they pay for...

I agree ChristianB, that P5 at $189 is a drop in the bucket, and all that...but it ain't worth a plugged nickel if it doesn't work....and I'm not talking perfection here...I can't even get a render off all the time....Hair ???? dynamics???? Maybe I"m one of few, that are having all these problems, and I'll be right along side of you....if it works on my system...to this point, it hasn't and doesn't.... I have the right, and will express my opinion, and be as critical as I want in regards to P5 or any product. I'm a fair guy...I can praise as loud as I can be critical...just ask Dan Farr over at DAZ...or Steve Cooper, as far as that goes....I spread my words equally in all directions :) I still think the condition of products in general would become much more stable and useable right out of the shoot if more people spoke up...gave credit where it is due, and hit pretty hard when criticsm is needed. In the case of Poser 5...there are some real nice features to this program, no doubt about it, and from the propaganda, it seems most users are having pretty good success running it, congrats to all of you, and I hope you continue having fun and some productivity...but for those of us having multitudes of problems, I think we deserve to express our opinions. It may seem like bitching and whining over and over and over, but its extremely frustrating....it is also frustrating knowing you have basically thrown a couple of hundred dollars down the toilet...not all of us are rolling in cash or have the luxury of being able to write the cost off to business expenses or to a company expense account. I've tried to tone down my bitching to at least try to gather some information that may help me work around or even fix the problems I'm having...I don't think I'm bitching just for the sake of bitching...I've been sending my bug reports to CL...and trying to make light of the whole ordeal...but it ain't easy.

Is anyone using this new version of Poser with Windows ME? If so try changing over to the professional choice for all PC users, Windows 2000 sp3. If you don't have the right OS then don't blame the particular software. ME also has problems with MAX and most likely any other serious animation software. If the program works for one person and not for another then it is not the software, how can it be? Yes maybe PSR5 needs a particular setup, so what! Like other have said already, look what you GET! I am working with MAX and Maya etc... and there is no comparison for the value, NONE! Please realize what a few hundred dollars is getting you and if it doesn't work find out why it doesn't work on YOUR system! Because you will not find any software that delivers so much for so little. None other exists, end of arguement!

As someone too cowardly to load P5 on my current PC (actually shopping for a new system), I am always careful to note in any discussion of P5 that there clearly are people who have serious usability problems that should be dealt with. And perhaps guilt over that caused CL to rush out the updater too soon also. On the other hand, to answer Spit's question, I think there are several reasons why people who have not had these problems with P5 post in the complaining threads. If they did not, the impression would be left that everyone has had problems, and accusations like Turtle's, that CL shipped knowing there were major bugs, would seem more plausible, given CL's admitted cash flow problem. Although CL has acknowledged that it became aware of certain non-critical bugs after the discs went into production (which is not unusual in the software biz), there is no evidence of which I am aware that CL knowingly shipped a product that would by and large not work on a large number of systems. That is tantamount to an accusation of fraud, and anyone who makes it really ought to think twice before doing so. Another reason why people respond to the complaint threads is that there has been a number of people who feel the need to vent their complaints, generally the same ones, on a daily or hourly basis. And a fair number of these complaints (and to be fair, I am not referring to Turtle's complaints on this point), are not complaints about actual, serious bugs, but were complaints about features that P5 did not include and was never advertised to include, criticisms of the renderer based on a complete ignorance of the fact that a more advanced renderer will simply take longer to render things than the old P4 renderer, or of the fact that the new renderer by necessity handles maps differently, and so on. It wastes my time to have to page through twice as many screens here every day, just to skip the usual rants from the usual suspects. I only occasionally post to the complaint threads to point out that those who I consider whiners do a disservice to those who actually have serious problems. Moreover, it is a two-way street. Open up a thread of people who are happy and excited about their well-functioning P5, and almost invariably, there will be posts from people who have problems, legit or otherwise. Such is the nature of a forum like this one. And when the discussion remains at least semi-civil, I think good things come from it. I, for one, in looking at new systems, will be careful to avoid apps that seem to conflict with P5, like Roxio's EZ CD Creator, and Norton Anti-Virus (both of which I have on my current system). Had I loaded P5 on my current sysytem and had problems, such info could have been a life-saver. That being said, I would add kudos to Dave-So for what seems to be a very good faith effort to overcome completely understandable frustration to work on getting his problems resolved. I am neither rolling in cash nor able to write P5 (or other software) off as a business expense myself, so I feel a certain degree of empathy on his account. And I hope that once it looks like any issues with the updater are completely ironed out that Turtle will give P5 another try, because the renders I've seen so far make it look more than worth it. At least you can take comfort in knowing that when I get a new system and put P5 on it, having written all of this, I will have some major problem, and you can all chant "nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah" in unison.

Kbade...thanks for the thoughtful post. I've read all the threads and I'm aware of the two-way thing. That's fine. What I object to is people incinuating that the only thing that could be wrong is the machines. I mean suggestions of upgrading to WinXP (there have been people who had trouble on WinXP too, btw), dumping software that is vital to their daily use of the machine (CD writer, antivirus) and stuff like that. If these were requirements, then it should be stated on the box. It costs money to replace your os, cd writer, and anti-virus on the off chance that that will solve the problems. I just think it's insulting to people who are having problems as if they're so stupid they don't have a perfect machine or are too stingy to pay for one.

Damn it Dave-So, I had my fingers crossed for you. That sucks! Spit, I've been saying the exact same thing as you,infact many have been, but it seems to be falling on deaf ears. I would add that the people that are having great luck with Poser 5( and it seems to be luck) may want to spend less time trashing those having problems and more time using the software that is working so well for them. Hell if my Poser 5 was working properly I'd be in here a lot less because I'd by using it! Price is not an issue that should reflect stability of software, features yes, but if its released into the marketplace it should work. PSP is a relatively inexpensive program but damn it...it works. Its not Paint Shop but it doesn't crash all the time or not get along with other software on board. "Another reason why people respond to the complaint threads is that there has been a number of people who feel the need to vent their complaints, generally the same ones, on a daily or hourly basis." And there's also a core group of people that jump in and defend CL at all cost, which plays like a tag team match at a poorly choreographed wrestling show. Actually we won't chant nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah. We'll just say we trried to warn you! Welcome to the club! Question is ..if this does happen to you, will you try to warn others too?

I am one of the "lucky" ones - that carefully read all the threads, upgraded all of the system drivers and made sure that there were no rogue DLL's wandering around my system.
When It came to install I switched everything off except for the few services needed to load the beast. I had automatic (and painless) registration. I drefragged and then did a physical disc check to write all bad sectors off the Hard discs - there are always a couple.

So with the amount of pre preparation (maybe two days of and on) and the amount of worrying and second guessing what could go wrong (weeks) Yes I guess you can say I was "lucky" - or extremely careful.

It paid off. I have a working, very stable Poser 5.

In my thirty odd years of working with computers (yes DaveSo I have worked with Crays- you really wouldn't like them) I have got very wary about new software. Corporate buyers would not buy Windows 2000 when it first appeared until the first service pack was released. 3Dmax had horrible problems with their hardware dongle when it was first released. The first Windows NT server I ever saw shut down the network when its screen saver switched (reason- uncompiled code for the screensaver)

IMHO CL was paniced into releasing Poser 5 - it needed the money and the user expectation was so high. I really needed a longer period of beta testing.

I am not one on the CL dancers(I look lousy in a tutu)

Just somebody who is careful and very patient.

Dr Paul Cooper

Do as I do: If you are considering buying software, let the magic of the internet provide for you, try it out and if it is good, buy it, otherwise uninstall. Yeah, I know you are not supposed to do this, but I don't want to spend my money on crap. Besides, can someone look me in the eye and say that it is bad for the industry if people spent their money on good products instead of crappy products? /Troberg

Operating system issues are clear cut. If it says on the box "Only for use with Win2000 or XP" then you have no-one to blame but yourself if it doesn't run under Win Me. But if a product claims to work under all versions of Windows then it should do so. A user may have specific other reasons for using Me instead of 2000, so "You should upgrade" is not helpful advice.

Avoiding programs that conflict with P5?

Ok, I got my P5, installed it (yes, Norton Antivirus was running in the background and my Firewall and several burning software and whatnot too, I didn't even bother to close the Windows Explorer as you are told to do) and it installed without complaints.

I did not reboot my PC after installing but launched the program and yes, it started fine and let me play around a bit.

The problems started as I installed the patches without having registered P5 before. But soon as I did that, uninstalled, reinstalled and whatnot it worked fine. I even edited my posershell.xml thingy to change the interface color and still no problems.

I have an AMD XP2000+, running WinXP Pro (spyware removed of course with XP antispy) without the latest update patch, didn't update any drivers and stuff.

It's a mystery to me why P5 runs on some machines without problems and won't on others. But I can understand that those who can't get it to run properly are annoyed.

NOONE should have to alter or change anything on their machine to run poser 5....If you meet their minimum system requirements it should work perfectly, if it doesn't stop whining and bitching here and go raise hell at curious labs. You buy sour milk you toss it or take it back, you buy a bad sound system you take it back, demand a refund people!! If they refuse, a few phone calls and they'll change their tune. If poser 5 is working for you, stop bragging about it and get up and on with rendering pics. Stop beating a dead horse, and get on with your lives Enough is Enough

Dirk5027 I did exactly as you suggested, other than the bitching and whiningg here part...I like to jump in with all feet and hands.... After a few days of running P5 with plenty of problems, I requested my money back from CL....We had a discussion, and I agreed to work with them to see if the patch solved my problems. It solved some, didn't solve some, and created others. I have continued to send in bug reports. Unfortunately, "working" with CL is a one-sided affair. I have not had any responses from their tech suppport. Perhaps they have written me off as a non-fixable client. If that's the case, fine...you won't hear from me here anymore....because I'm ditching Poser 4 as well....I'm not going to deal with any of it...it isn't worth the agravation to me. I curently have 2 emails sitting in CL customer service inbox from last night explaining my current situation. I'm hoping to hear from someone soon. Its either fix it or cash back...now.

Yea dave I do feel bad it doesn't work for you and others, didn't mean for my comment to sound so harsh, but if it was me i'd be raising holy hell

the spec to my machine is lower than everyone else here, and i have had no problems save for a slow loading, spit said ealier that he says we shouldn't say it is your machinef at fault it adds insults to injury but arn't you all doing the same to CL. Fact you know it works on other peoples machine, some with better spec some with worse. Fact it dont work on your machine. Fact the software of poser 5 is the same, conclusion something on your machine is causing the problem, now it could be something as simple as a corrupted dll in window, it happens all the time, I dont mean to be blaming you guys with problems but i am going to stand up and say stop blaming CL, it wouldn't of been released if it didn't work on the test and devlopers machine, i recomend people with problems look at thier systems and take the advice of computer tech support's standard answer when they dont know what has gone wrong 'clean the hard drive and reinstall windows'

idova... just reformatted and reinstalled 2 weeks prior to getting Poser 5. I understand what you are saying....and are probably correct that it is maybe a problem on our machines....however, the product was shipped incomplete and with known bugs...most which were deemed uncritical....Now..what is critical...probably BSOD, no loads, etc etc.... However, the non-critical bugs can be critical as well to certain users, if you can't use the program, that's pretty critical IMO. Is it my responsibility to go through all the Dlls on my machine to figure out which is bad...uninstall all my software to get P5 running ??? No way.... And I have not heard back from CL tech support even once on any of the bug reports I have sent in...oither than prior to SR-1...it was on a render lockup I was having...and it was caused by my inadvertantly have displacement channel active on the strand hair...it couldn't do displacement on the hair...my error.

dirk5027 has a good point- if the program just won't work on your computer, return the program and ask for your money back. Don't consider the money to be "thrown away"- if your computer meets the "minimum requirements", then the program should work, if not, you should be able to return the product and get your money back. After all, I believe it's called "merchantability"- you buy the product on good faith that it will work on your computer, but after installing it, it doesn't work. And, if it doesn't work, get your monwy back. Yes, you "opened the seal", but how else would you know if it worked or not? If CL refuses to give you your money back, come back to these forums and raise a stink about it.

I will.... :)

kbade said: "I, for one, in looking at new systems, will be careful to avoid apps that seem to conflict with P5, like Roxio's EZ CD Creator, and Norton Anti-Virus (both of which I have on my current system). Had I loaded P5 on my current sysytem and had problems, such info could have been a life-saver." I'm confused. Does having norton anti-virus installed potentially cause P5 not to work right? That isn't good. That shouldn't be. Did I misunderstand what you meant? I know that it's impossible to test every contingency, but norton anti-virus is a very, very commonly used program. Hope I misunderstood.

Perhaps with AV, almost any, there can be conflicts when installing programs. I think its pretty common place to turn off AV during installations. Not sure why it would cause problems while actually running Poser5...it shouldn't. If it does, that, in my mind, would be a problem with Poser 5 coding, not Norton or any other virus program. In fact, if Poser 5 is having problems with any other program resident on the system, that would be a Poser 5 problem, not the other way around, especially when all was running fine prior to installing P5.

I'm running P5 on ME with a 1.7 ghz athlon and 768mg DDR ram, 32 mg video card. I have an occasional glitch, but mostly works fine. I found that upgrading from 512 to 768 made a big difference. I have EZ CD creator, it doesn't seem to cause problems. I haven't downloaded the patch yet. It definitely suck that people with seemingly normal and up to date machines are having so much trouble.I would be frustrated to no end if I was in the situation that a lot of others are in. Dave-So, in your first comment you said that in firefly it shows that it's rendering, but only the background shows up. In firefly the background pops up first and then the render starts from the top down, unlike the P4 renderer. Maybe it's just taking a long time to get down to the figure part. I've had to wait a while looking at a black background before seeing the figure start to render. I don't know, you've probably thought of all this and a lot more. P5 is fairly cheap for an upgrade. I'm disappointed with Judy, she's not usable for me. Too ugly even with trying all kinds of morphs. The hair looks weird (wirey and too shiney) and you can't export it. The material room is a needed addition and works well. The clothifier is in my opinion the best new feature in P5. I guess I'm saying that all in all, for me, it's worth the $179 but not much more than that. I hope someone figures out what the problem is for those of you who can't use it.

In a perfect world (and this is not) a program like Poser5 would have no dependancies on other peoples code ... like display drivers, or hard drive systems or whatever. In that perfect world if Poser5 didn't work we could say with 100% certainty that the problem is withing CL's ability to fix. We don't live in that world. We live in a world where the end user machine (PC or Mac) is running millions of lines of code from hundreds of developers providing support for thousands of API services. I have seem 3DS Max not be compatible with the default installation of certain printer drivers, for example. I have seen Mac software that didn't run if you had a particular brand of USB hard drive installed. OF COURSE the problem is usually with the vendor code, and of course most of the Poser bugs come from code that CL shipped. That is not my point. My point is that it is FLAT OUT impossible to write a non trivial program that will work on 100% of the client environments that meet your minimum specs. That means on some machines the answer is "check your drivers" on others it is "uninstall, reinstall" and on others it is "sorry, we can't help you". Again, this is not to absolve CL of the bug problems that are their fault - but it is silly to think that there will never be a situationw here a software vendor simply has to say "sucks to be you". Get a refund.

As I recall, in the earlier days of Windows software, developers moved away from DOS towards writing Windows apps because there were so many different graphics cards, memory expansion systems, other code conflicts etc, that writing DOS code to run on all PC's became a major headache. One of the things Windows was supposed to do was hide all that from the application, so that programs should run on 'any' PC. Seems we've come full circle... P5 is certainy not unique in being a problem application on some systems these days. Cheers Ian

Face the reality. For a program to put a single pixel on the screen, the call will have to go through at least five layers of code, each coded by a different person. There is something like 30 miliion lines of code in XP, not including drivers and applications. It would be naive to think that much code could be made without some errors or that every contingency could be tested. The advantage compared to the DOS days is that the programmer does not have to care about what graphics card (or other hardware) is used. If there is a bug in the drivers for the graphics card, it is the responsibility of the manufacturer to fix it, not the application programmer. In DOS, you had to know exactly how to control the card/printer/whatever, in effect you had to more or less make your own driver. There is a huge difference between having to provide support for hardware variations and just identifying bugs in existing drivers. Sorry Ian, but your comparison is just plain stupid. /Troberg

Attached Link: http://www.neotaku.com/doax

I don't feel "ripped off" disappointed, but not ripped off. If anything it was my fault for believing the hype :) I've been "puching deck" for 20+ years, I should have known better. You get what you pay for. I've just paid over $100 for a video game, I'll have to pay around 30 Euros import duty, and another 100 Euros to get my xbox chipped to play it, (it's Japanese) It's actually got a lot in common with poser, many scantily clad women wandering/lounging around doing nothing :P I believe there is a Volleyball game in there somewhere, but I doubt I'll be playing it that much... :) I think of P5 as an object lesson in desire. Sometimes the anticipation is better than the consumation :) Doubtless I'll get some use out of it, once I convert the characters and poses, etc. to P4, and the content disk is very good. So it's not a total loss. If you paid full price for it though I can see how you'd be a bit upset if you're one of the ones having problems. Wonder if I can the pro pack cheap on ebay or something? Multiple windows might come in handy if nothing else. Anyone got opinions on the ProPack service packs? Meanwhile, "bring on the girls" :) later jb

Narsil wrote: "I drefragged and then did a physical disc check to write all bad sectors off the Hard discs - there are always a couple." You're obviously technically astute, and your level-headed words regarding pre-preparation are wise. Having said so, I'd make one strong suggestion: ALWAYS do your ScanDisk (or whatever similar disc evaluation/repair) BEFORE you defrag. That way, bad sectors will be blocked off so that the defragmentation process won't rewrite data to those sectors. It can certainly happen if you do it the other way around. Also, as we all know, defragging can take a long time. Sometimes Windows defragmenter will stop in the middle of the process if it finds bad sectors, so again, ScanDisc first so as not to waste time. Finally, you'll speed up both processes tremedously if you run them in "safe mode." Most PC users can enter safe mode by hiting the F8 key at startup, usually during or immediatetly after the BIOS screen. For those who don't know, only critical drivers are loaded for safe mode, which will speed up your system check and repair apps by a long shot.

..

OT, or maybe not, how do you do a scandisk in XP? I'm feeling stupid but I can't find it.

Ah,where is Curious Labs RESPONSES to all these posts?

I'm hoping they've hunkered down and are working on fixing and bettering things.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=897165

I don't know that P5 has problems with Norton Anti-Virus or Roxio's CD stuff for sure, but the linked thread discusses the possibility, particularly with people running Win ME. And if you search the forum for Roxio, you will turn up other threads noting that a number of apps, including various anti-virus apps, AOL, and EZ CD Creator overwrite some of the standard MS system DLLs and drivers, which could be a source of some people's problems (and which, incidentally, would not be solved just by turning the app off during install). My guess would be that an anti-virus app by itself would generally not conflict with P5, because so many PCs come with one from the factory and any such conflict would also hamper CL's efforts for Content Paradise. But I have no definitive opinion on it because there are so many variables from system to system. It's a problem endemic to the software biz as it stands today. One of the other threads notes that a fair amount of this type of problem would have been solved if MS had structured its OSs differently (though it ocurs to me that if MS tried to make it difficult to change DLLs, some would have seen it as more evidence of their attemots to deter companies from developing apps that compete with MS apps).

i have both norton and roxio on my machine(upgraded with xp 3 weeks prior to the arival of p5) I turned them off when I installed. As I've stated before p5 is working just dandy. Direct cd always boots up in the background.

I run P5 SR1 on a 1.3Ghz PC with 128Mb RAM, 40Gb HD with just 1Gb free space on WinME. So far I only have trouble with the obvious lack of memory (as to be expected, not a P5 bug!) and a few (dismissable) userinterface oddities. P5 works great for me (so far...). Im sorry for those people that dont seem to get P5 in working order, however, did you consider the fact that your OS might be the troublemaker? Both XP and 2000 are know to have 100s of bugs...