Y-Phil, I neither wanted to attack you nor single you out. I was just replying to FoulPet's comment, wanting to see somthing more realistic. Sorry!

There are many "poor" Firefly shaders around that either are nowhere realistic nor are optimized in any way. Many take eons to render without any visible benefit, so I spent a lot of time in the past creating my own.

So, yes, your test proves that Superfly can render a given shader faster than Firefly.

But was it a "good" Firefly shader in the first place? Was this shader optimized for speed in the first place, or was it just hundreds of nodes cobbled together with most of them not doing anything?

And most important: What do we want from Poser? What does the average Poser buyer want from Poser?

Truly photorealistic shaders, but no access to truly photorealistic figures and props?

Or might he or she be better of with less "Gee-Whiz" tech, but better figures and more realistic props instead?

Merchants and customers left because Vicky 5 didn't natively work in Poser anymore. (Ok, we had a few workarounds at first, but they were just that, workarounds)

And the replacements were all pretty poor, sorry to be so blunt.

And instead of using the little time and money available to supply us with better figures, the owners of Poser just sloppily implemented another shader engine!

As long as we don't have those figures, I see any other  new "Feature" (aside from bug-fixes), as a disservice to Poser.

When I bought my Poser 4 in 2000 (I still have the box), I did so not because of the render engine. I did it because Posette looked so great!

"Wow, I can have full control over such a great figure? And there's a whole family of them. And animals, too?

TAKE MY MONEY, Curios Labs!

And when I opened Poser 4 for the first time, I was hooked!"

*

When I opened Poser 11 for the first time and was greeted by L'Femme, I couldn't eradicate her fast enough from my runtime.

"BE GONE, FIEND! I rather render box primitives for the rest of my life than succumb to your abominable shape!"

Sorry, I know this hurts the feelings of some, but if any of those Vicky replacements we went through in the last decade (Yes, it's already 11 years now since Vicky's gone) were any good, why is still 99% of the merchadise sold here for G8?

Why did all the talented artists leave in droves? And took their customers with them?

Because Poser doesn't inspire them anymore, that's why.

And that is not because the render engine needed an upgrade.

It's like having a car with a broken engine. And instead of fixing the engine, you re-upholster the seats and give it a new paintjob.

And then you wonder why noone wants to buy your car.

*

Anyway, I will unsubscribe from this thread now.

We had this discussion since the day DAZ released V5, and I actually warned this community about that exactly this would happen the moment I noticed that Vicky 4 had some "Studio-only" features.

Maybe Poser 12 isn't abandonware, yet.

But to me, it sure feels like it already is.

IMHO

Their advertisement sounds kind of desperate.
Good luck, they are in need of the best, in order to bring that old stranded boot back into the open sea.

By definition, Poser is clearly not abandoned ware, for Bondware still cares for Poser. How well, would be a different subject.
It is also a fact, that Poser's fan base have shrunk.
This can be told from the new messages coming in here in the forum by a day. I remember times, when there were al least ten more with every new day. Now there is maybe one or two new posts.
The amount of products in the store have decreased as well. 
Poser lost popularity.
It is now behind DAZ and Reallusion.
Bondware has to come up with something really special to get Poser out of its corner and put it back in its pole position, where it used to be before its shameful Poser 11 release.
My guess is, that they are silent, because they are thinking about concepts.

Of course I meant "At Vendors"
Still no edit here.

I'm primarily a Poser user, although I do want to get into Studio...

Anyways products such as this one: BLACKHAT - G2 Cami's Closet II - Coco 3D Figure Assets Anagord (renderosity.com)
Are meant for Studio, but they have the Poser materials. Why do they have the Poser materials though? The last time I checked, you cannot import DS studio file format into Poser. So far the only thing I have managed to do is import the G3-G8 model into Poser 11.

Appolo looks right out of the box like Richard Corben‘s DEN.

Sorry for being unclear.
I meant, a short note about, what YOU like about the pictures you've picked.

These are the worst times to buy a GPU.The prizes are insane, because Bit Coin miner bought all GPUs.

TwiztidKidd posted at 6:17AM Thu, 13 May 2021 - #4419048

I still have Poser 4 lol ... it's good for people that, you know, can't wait the last two seconds to take their food out of the microwave

that looks really cool. I'd like to see more recently made Poser4 render engines made here. I still must have Poser 7 somewhere.

i was never able to manage the Bryce editor window and renders took for ever.

"non dead eyes" sorry, still dead eyes, which is not a matter of render, settings or use of shaders, but posing. Those eyes don't have a focus. Looks like being lost in thoughts.

shedofjoy posted at 7:12AM Wed, 05 May 2021 - #4418227

I finally received a site mail, apparently it falls under the category of BDSM as there are chains and restraints..... "Rescuing the princess".... each to their own.... even though there is less nudity, i suppose it's up to each persons interpretation, and so i have decided to not post here any more... at all... i like the community and there are fantastic artists here, and i wish them all the best. I will leave the account active, but my days of being active are now over, thank you all and Good night... (if you want to see what i'm up to im over at DA)

I understand your frustration. Rendo is not the same anymore. They do have some great vendors here, and I am still here just because of them.

Liquid_Ice posted at 11:51AM Mon, 03 May 2021 - #4418300

all the wrinkles and sagging skin are actually done with normal maps.

Are those Superfly Renders? Those look actually very good.

Show me or link me to amazing Superfly renders, that might want me to use Superfly.

Sadly a complete overhaul of the Poser UI is probably less likely than native genesis support considering it would be tantamount to a complete $$core re-write of the application.$$

To be fair, Poser had a UI overhaul (Poser 8/ Poser 2010 ?) and it was in fact a huge improvement.