Page faults affect performance, but there's no relation between page faults and stability. They're only "bad" if they're unnecessary. Sometimes they're just unavoidable. 3D rendering usually requires a LOT of memory for geometry information and especially texture data. It's typically accessed in an irregular pattern -- which means that if you don't have enough "working set" (the physical RAM pages each application is currently allowed to use) it'll have to constantly move the data between RAM (working set) and disk (backing store).

That can really slow things down, since disk access is lots slower than main memory. Still, if that affects stability, then the stability in question is the OS, not the application. (Page faults aren't controlled by or even normally visible to the application.)

I notice that the display up in the first note shows the system has allocated about half of the system's 1Gb RAM. With any moderately complicated scene I'll bet Poser could easily use that much all by itself. Which also implies you might have had plenty if the system had allowed Poser to use the other half gigabyte.

Generally, Poser 4 has been working fine for me in Mac OS X all along, including 10.2. However, there's one "quirk"... One of the things I loved about moving Poser 4 from Mac OS 9 to X was that it no longer could lock up the whole bloody system while it rendered -- I could still switch away from Classic and get work done. Except it was never quite smooth. The dock was hidden, and CMD-TAB didn't switch. Except that if I hit CMD-TAB with my cursor at the bottom of the screen the dock would pop up. Yeah, weird. Well, with 10.2, this doesn't work anymore. I did find, however, the I could work around it by adding another hack to the equation... if I bring up the Force Quit dialog and select another application (but don't quit anything) and THEN do the CMD-TAB/dock thing... (Sheesh.) While it's true that Poser was always a "bad citizen" (when rendering), this is basically a Classic problem rather than a Poser problem. Classic is just a Mac OS X application and ought to behave like one. But heck, Poser is the only thing I ever use Classic for, and it's a minor annoyance once I found the workaround. And "soon" we'll know when we can look forward to not worrying about this anymore. (If you believe the web page...)

I've tried with Mozilla 1.1 on 3 platforms (Mac OS X, Win XP, and Tru64 UNIX); plus Internet Explorer on XP and OS X; and OmniWeb and Chimera on OS X. It didn't work RIGHT on any of those. However, after writing the earlier note I went off and tried the latest Chimera nightly build, and I now own the full Millenium Dragon pack. I'm not sure whether that's good or bad, since it's really cool but I'm sure that (like 99% of all the other stuff I've bought for Poser) I'll never use it enough to justify the price. But that's what hobbies are about, right? ;-)

The new DAZ store crashes half my browsers, and the other half either can't display (or can't operate) the menus on the left. The one time I got through to try to order the dragon package it went into an infinite loop insisting that I log in (when I did it just went back to the login screen). I suppose in the end that may save me some money, because while I'm terribly tempted at $20 there's no way I'd pay full price once the introductory price wears off in a day or two.

Hmm. I gave it a try. Both Photoshop and GIMP claim the renamed .bum file isn't a valid bmp and refuse to open it. That's not to say some image programs might not be more forgiving, but at the least it's not a completely "kosher" bmp.

If a .bum is really just a grayscale .bmp, why the heck doesn't CL support it in Firefly? They've clearly gone to a lot of effort to support P4 figures and props... why would they skimp on something that'd take 10 minutes to code and test? Why make everyone RENAME every .bum file they own to .bmp?

If the conversion is more complicated, though (e.g., Bill's post that an "indirect" conversion process is required), it might make a little more sense. But if someone else could write a conversion program, surely CL could.

Hmm.

But I've got a couple of packages that came with both .bum and .jpg source files for the bumps... as well as some that have only .jpg requiring Poser to convert on the first load. So it wouldn't be too hard to compare the source and result...

One caveat... from skimming through the rendering section in the P5 manual, it appears that Firefly will NOT support P4 bump map (.bum) files.

So bump mapped figures will be stuck with the P4 renderer, unless you also have the source file (e.g. .jpg) to plug into the Firefly material editor.

(I don't know why this is... is there no way to convert a .bum back into a straight grayscale image file? What the heck IS a .bum, anyway?)

I almost skipped this one, but just for the random amusement value of being different: At home, Mac OS X 10.1.5. (With Mozilla 1.1b, by the way. IE is probably 2nd best, but Mozilla's tabs are addictive. I'm surprised IE hasn't stolen them yet.) At work, Tru64 UNIX V5.1 on an Alpha. Also with Mozilla 1.1b. (Though my lowly EV6 chip is no longer the fastest on the planet, it's still faster than most. It'll never run Poser, though... ;-) )

(((I have never had a MAC and never wanted one. Years ago, way back in the 80's, I thought that Apple computers were way over priced and the software support even then skimpy.))) Funny. I love hearing people who try to make it a matter of price. I'm sure you also bought the cheapest car, and the cheapest house, and always the cheapest clothes? If quality is any part of your decision process for anything, you're way off base here. Software support skimpy? Compared to Microsoft? Huh. But then, Macs (and Mac users) don't need much support. Which leads to the main reason Macs have always been cheaper, especially in a corporate environment. (But IT hates it because it basically puts them out of a job.) (((Honestly, I really don't even see the point in there being a Mac.))) You should. First off, without the Mac, Microsoft would own approximately 100% of the market instead of around 95%, and life for PC users would be far worse than it is. They'd have absolutely no motivation for even second-hand innovation. Second, Apple has often been called "Microsoft's research division", and much of what Microsoft has deigned to improve has been copied from or motivated by Apple. (Of course if Xerox had known how to capitalize on PARC the world might be way different.)

So; someone's already commented that several of the new gallery images look "familiar". I agree, and it seems to me that some appeared quite a while ago. Now, since beta testers and CL have been playing with Poser 5 for some time, that doesn't necessarily mean they're NOT Poser 5... but it'd be nice to have confirmation just so we can know how wowed to be by them. ;-) It'd be nice if each would at least identify the components. "Standard P5 woman with default texture, strand-based hair, and dynamic cloth", or "Poser 5 render of Victoria with strand-based hair"; etc. Some time ago, when the group photo with the "giant economy size Poser box" was posted, someone asked if the new web site would have employee info. I thought that sounded nice; but there's nothing other than a different poser box photo, and a page of executive bios, as far as I can see. Disappointing! The group photo doesn't even name names. Nor is there any information I could find on the artists who contributed. Several have been named here, and others guessed at... but I'd had the impression there'd be credit on the web site? Or are we to infer that from the names in the gallery?

Let's say, tactfully, operaguy, that sounds like an unwise decision -- but your decision to make. Mac systems are really far better for the money than PCs... especially if what you want to do is create rather than fiddle with the system. (By the way, by all accounts faster G4 systems, with much improved memory bandwidth -- the only real technical advantage of current high end PC systems -- will be out before Poser 5 ships even for PCs. And even if Poser doesn't do multiprocessor rendering, you'll still find a second processor doing some work to help you out.) And the way to stop developers like CL from treating the best computing platform as "follow-along-eventually" is for more people to buy based on quality rather than mindlessly following Monopo$$oft. Not the other way around. As we used to say in Chemistry... "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."

Traditional Mac files (HFS & HFS+ filesystems) have TWO 4-byte codes identifying the CREATOR and the TYPE of the file. By default an OPEN FILE dialog will show files with compatible TYPE, but double-clicking a file will open the CREATOR. For example, you can have a JPG file that when double-clicked will open in Photoshop, another that will open in the QuickTime PictureViewer, and a third that will open in Internet Explorer. But they'll all appear in a dialog looking for JPG files. The Mac also has a File Exchange facility that knows how to map file types for PC files into CREATOR and TYPE codes, for files transported from other systems like PCs. But there aren't many file types set up by default, and most people don't bother. A PZ3 file moved to a Mac from a PC, for example, won't automatically open in Poser when double-clicked... but you can either use a utility to set the TYPE & CREATOR codes, or you should be able to set up the File Exchange control panel so that it knows a .pz3 file maps to Poser. (I'm not sure that'd help for a .cr2 file, though, since Poser searches them out directly. In fact, I've never tried to put a PC .cr2 file into the Poser runtime hierarchy to see whether Poser's search finds it without the CREATOR/TYPE data... perhaps it would, but MacConverter makes that irrelevant.) HFS/HFS+ files have two parts, a DATA fork and a RESOURCE fork. Control ("metadata") information about the file, including the CREATOR and TYPE, live in the RESOURCE fork. Applications can store arbitrary information in there, and Poser stores the preview image (.rsr on PCs) in there. Which means that even if Poser would find a "raw" PC .cr2, you'd get the generic non-preview without MacConverter. I don't know whether the Mac ProPack supports separate PNG data files for previews or whether it still requires the resource; but again, with MacConverter it really doesn't matter. Mac OS X is a bit different; while there's still HFS+ "under the covers", the system treats it as a UNIX UFS file system. But that's more relevant for Poser 5 than Poser 4; Poser 4 (and MacConverter) run only in Classic mode, which is a hosted Mac OS 9.2.2 running on top of Mac OS X... and it still uses the HFS+ filesystem with resource forks. I don't know what Poser 5 will use. It'd be nice if it uses a common file format across both platforms. But then, there are advantages to using OS-specific formats, too, and if there's any need I'm sure MacConverter will be there. So the only thing to watch for when trying to make Mac-friendly Poser downloads is to avoid those annoying and pointless PC .EXE installer packages. If you've just put the Poser files in a ZIP, you'll have no trouble.