I get spam from them trying to sell new products when I don't see any word about P5 being fixed... I see that the beta forum is dead.... I see that CL would prefer us to visit the curious news section of their website which hasn't been updated since they announced it. And they use it to push other products. How long do we wait before organizing some sort of class action? They were friends, nice people...... but I am thinking enough is enough. I want something done. I am sure it was "just business" when kupa and crew got creamed. I think that they should be prepared to face similar action from the users that have been swindled. Befor I get attacked from the blindly faithful, please review the last bug list we had (if you can find it in the now defunct beta forum) before telling me everything runs fine for you.

CL is still in business, but I think it's being run by the parent company now (EGI-Sys). They do have at least one programmer working on problems (I've gotten email from him, and am working with him on getting a problem resolved). I think the US office is now mostly sales and quick trouble shooting. I miss Kupa and the personal touch. He was always honest and tried to keep us informed. When he goes to a new company, I'll watch their products with interest and be more likly to buy them because he's a part of it. I'm actually glad the beta forum is gone. It had degenerated into CL bashing (in my humble opinion, deserved). I'm sorry the bug list (such as it was) was taken with it. We never really had a complete and accurate list though. I don't think a class action would get anywhere for two reasons. First, it'd need someone to organize it and deal with the lawyers. Second, you can't get blood out of a turnip. I think that if CL could, they'd throw programmers on the project, hire a good project manager and testing team, and spend money to make everything good. They'd try to keep the customer base informed as much as possible with updates and work closly with a "beta forum" type group and keep up with it rather than just let it die. They'd organize the Mac team to get that product out the door. If they could. I've reached the point where I think it may be time to move on. I have hopes for Daz Studio. I'll live with the P5 I've got and it's current functionality. If CL gives us an SR3 soon, that's great. If we get the promised content, that's even greater. But I'm tired of all the fighting about it. Who has a working product, who doesn't, who feels cheated, who feels they just need more time. Blaming each other instead of intellegently looking at the problem and coming up with solutions. We've reached a point where all the complaining does nothing more than hurt the community. And this is from one of the big complainers.

Nobody would like to see CL pull through this more than I would, but I am beginning to feel that they are too far gone to survive. Their products have lost credibility in the marketplace due to their own actions (or lack thereof). They seem to be completely out of touch with their customers and the real priorities. I for one would not purchase another CL product (no matter what it promised to do) until they show some credibility by fixing Poser 5 before they move on to other markets. I don't think a class action suit would do any good. CL probably won't be around long enough to ever make it to court. It makes me sad to have to say this, but I feel abandoned by CL, and disappointed by their arrogance.

What, in particular, is "broken" about P5? Seems to work for me. Just curious

"broken"? ummm bunch of probs with aniamtion , hair that colides with itself and becomes bride of frankenstien. bunch o stuff I remember from the 'bug list' had to do with animation. My p5 works, didn't care about animation, til I tryed one and my whole system went kablooie! Now I just do stuff in Lightwave. my 2 cents.

there's the inevitable "it works for me"...:)...lol Beav

btw...no offense meant, grypho...glad yours works..:) Beav

Working as a software engineer for a startup myself I can only sympathize with CL! Right now it is no fun at all to be in the tech business! Just about every software company that I know of is losing money, the best ones slowly the good ones barely hagning on and the bad ones are long gone (with one GIANT exception). Especially with the situation Poser is in supporting both Mac and the Microsoft base. You are quite correct that suing CL would do no good at all, if anyhting it would only trigger their demise! Remember though that CL whatever their present situation is essentially PEOPLE, and these PEOPLE have lived and breathed POSER for a very long time (as I liik fiondly at my Poser 2 CD). I doubt if they will just give up and go away if they are given any options at all. Maybe they will have some choices maybe not, no one really knows but I for one don't doubt that Steve Cooper and his crowd will be there trying their best to the very end! I guess what I am saying is lets cut these guys a little slack, they are going through a difficult time and really do need our support as much as we need theirs! Mike (Poser 2,3,4,PP and P 5 user) Hopefully to be a Poser 6 user one day!

Those of us who never owned Poser 4 probably are happy with P5. It does what Poser 4 does....with an extra rendering engine and different material room. The face room seems to work for some folks even though it is limited to P5 people. The P5 hair takes too many resources on my machine(I simply don't have enough Ram). I suspect it was designed with the animators in mind. Obviously it is possible to make since there are vendors here and at RDNA who have made some really nice P5 hair. Flowing cloth is probably best in animated scenes as well. Animation is not why I purchased it, so I'm not disappointed by that. I guess when someone says "mine works", it simply means that it meets their needs. Those who were looking for useable animation tools no doubt have good reason to be disappointed.

Abandoned we are... And damn the animation was why I Invested in P5 and CL....

I have no idea what the financial backing of Egisys is. But if its' like Corel, there's some money and big corporate idea that the ma and paw way of doing things are wrong. I have no doubt CL is watching this thread. I also have no doubt that folks will hate the silence. Truth is, silence means nothing. Its not an admission of development and its not an admission of failure. Its just nothing. But words are not silence and the words we had are that Egisys is working on the mac version, that there is development, that there is at least one programmer working on bugs, that ProV (whatever that is) is in the works, etc, etc. So, who knows. As for me, I'm glad to get P5 and have some commercial ideas for it. Time will tell. Lets see what happens and realize that we are now no different than the Brycers on the Bryce forum who have not heard from Conan or Corel in ages.

EGISys seems to have two main interests other than Poser, 3D content for MS Office etc. and bringing 3D to the internet (can you say Metacreations?). If the .com bubble hadn't burst and everyone had jobs, money to spend and high speed internet access, the latter might be a booming business today. AS it stands, I think it'll be a while before Meta, Viewpoint or anyone else makes a lot of money on it. Of course EGISys is a German company, and while I'm sure the tech economy there may not be booming either, they're not as tied to the American economy as many domestic firms.

I think it is more simple. They released a poor upgrade too long after P4 and killed their customer base. I saw the P5 alpha months before final beta and told them if was a horror show. The hair room never evolved beyond apha and uses today the actual "quickie" layout I sent them. I never dreamed they would just say "good let's use this and we're done." Months before it was relased I told them you cannot have a hair room without an undo button. It sill had the ProPack splash screen. Was like whipping a rope into a shape while one end is tied to a chair. They knew and released it anyway. All of us who have been around forever were bound by beta agreements so we couldn't speak publically but we all saw the end coming. I'll never forget that personally. Three years we never heard one word from them. No tech tutorials, no development support, nothing. Then they pop in to sell P5 and vanished again. I'm still bitter about it. It was all so unneccesary. P5 could have been great but they wouldn't listen to anyone. And they sold it to us anyway. I hope there is a Poser6. Perhaps firing everyone associated with P5 was their way of trying to turn things around. Know knows. Still sad about the whole thing, Anton Poser does have dynamic hair but it isn't in the hair room. It is in the cloth room. That is where P5's hair potential is.

Poser does have dynamic hair but it isn't in the hair room. It is in the cloth room. That is where P5's hair potential is. Funny... I was just playing around in the cloth room thinking about hair... Do you have more details, tips or thoughts ? Have you tried making some some hair in the cloth room? I would love to hear about it.... all ears :) Niles

No. I withdrew from beta after seeing the alpha. Some existing hair props applies as cloth should work. Try Kusaburo's hair. Although not my taste, "sheet" hair would likely work best. Anton

(Post 13) That was well said, Anton.

As I've said before, P5 works on my underpowered Win98 laptop, and I use it whenever possible on projects, although I still do most animation and multi-figure projects on my souped-up Mac with Poser4-ProPack. Just the multiple runtimes and other library management, the nesting dial groups, and multi-node materials editor, make working in Poser 5 so much more efficient and pleasant for me personally. I still think there's a good chance the Mac OSX version of P5 will be available in a few months, it will be better than the PC version - and I'll buy it. But then, I'll get DAZ Studio, too :-) BTW: the beta forum still shows up from my bookmark and is listed on the forums page: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12440

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"I think it is more simple. They released a poor upgrade too long after P4 and killed their customer base. I saw the P5 alpha months before final beta and told them if was a horror show. The hair room never evolved beyond apha and uses today the actual "quickie" layout I sent them. I never dreamed they would just say "good let's use this and we're done." Months before it was relased I told them you cannot have a hair room without an undo button. It sill had the ProPack splash screen. Was like whipping a rope into a shape while one end is tied to a chair." It is all about Money.......They needed alot of money for another project and as a customer base we are expendable...Poser made them quick money before and it did it again...I dont think it will again.... Thanks for poppin in and explaining some things.... They knew and released it anyway."

They weren't the only software company on the planet to do that (knew, and released it anyway). I won't say more. My point is that it's all about the bottom line in business. Bottom line first, customer relations second. Laurie

A lot of companies had "stars in their eyes" at the time CL apparently started working on Poser 5. The industry as a whole was booming and I suspect CL like many others, thought they could "be like Bill" and try to be all things to all people.....corner the market and get rich fast. The only problem was that they didn't have the "deep pockets" that Microsoft has. Few, if any, of these companies were able to repeat the "Microsoft miracle" and many of the "starry eyed" went down the tubes trying,at a huge cost to investers. I think it's a miracle that CL is still around at all!

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12440

Well, having read all of it, it probably explains both why there is a Daz Studio, and why there are no P5 products from Daz, EULA and $30K not withstanding. Still, you don't get anywhere by being nice in business. later jb --- Who's bottom of the food chain and knows it :)

I think peopel are missing teh piotn with P5 the problem with it is not only that it was rushed out, not only was it a patchork or third part plugins, but it was FUBAR from day one. We here were all told it was a TOTAL rewrite. Oen look at P5 tell you it is not. The fact tehre are teh SAME BUGS is a giveaway or cryclyed code. Don't get me wrong I love P4. But P5 is a nightmare. Wat best with teh patch is as good as P4 I treat P5 like I treat Aliens 3 and Highlander 2. Just pretend I never saw it and continue.

"I treat P5 like I treat Aliens 3 and Highlander 2." ::laughs until she cries:: Oh gosh, what a BEAUTIFUL simile. I love you, man. Ziest... ::shudders::

Well, there is that... But then I've been involved with computers long enough to not believe the hype. To my shame, I sold an awful lot of Amiga's (So the world may know :) with the aid of a game called "Shadow of the Beast" Looked great, sounded great had an amazing into, and zero gameplay. I sold 15 Amiga's and 15 games (and accesories) in one day once. Not once did I tell anyone that I thought the game was utter crap, I wasn't on comission either, I just liked the Amiga, and wanted more people to buy one. I've also bought hardware that was, at best, suspect. When you could get it to work at all :) I'd actually be quite happy with P5 if only it were as easy to use and as fast as P4. But it's slow, cumbersome and awkward. Games producers however usually have a vested interest in both producing good software and not ripping people off. But then they sell chiefly on reputation, (which is difficult to build and easy to lose) and review,(where good ones are hard to come by) which is not really the same with applications. Which may have one definitive review at best, and an implicit guarantee that at least 50% of the users will buy the upgrade. Case in point, I've just bought C&C Generals, it already has a patch out, all of the things it patches are online stuff, (which I will never use.) But There are already many websites devoted to the C&C universe, as well as numerous message boards. Word gets around quick, it requires real grunt arcoss the board, (CPU, GFX, RAM) to run at a decent Res at any speed. People are questioning if it's worth the cost of upgrading, etc. The only difference between them and us is the entry price. We all took a punt on P5, some out of trust, some on hype, many simply because it was the next upgrade. Chances are, many will not be making that mistake again. But the machine rolls on, and hope springs eternal. I don't expect CL to "fix" P5, I've been here before, I too haven't seen Highlander 2... We are the bottom of the food chain, accept it and your life becomes a lot easier. Otherwise you're just throwing bad emotion after good money. The software industry has always been like this, (it's something they take geeks aside to tell them in school :) getting angy about it will get you nowhere, get creative. Poser4 has survived this long because people were unwilling to let it die, they found work arounds. I don't see that anything changes if/when CL dies. We have the software & the game goes on, it stops when when do. later jb

"The software industry has always been like this, (it's something they take geeks aside to tell them in school..." I rather think it's the MBAs who get taken aside in B school. I suspect by that point though, they already know the story and have bought into it. Geeks, by definition, are more interested in the coolness of the technology than bean counting and release deadlines. I doubt it was thr programmers at CL who wanted to build Poser 5 on the aging and still buggy Poser foundation. Apple has been on the rebound since the got rid of the business savvy Pepsi man and brought back geeky Steve Jobs. In reality of course, you need both business acumen and technical talent. Sometimes, a company can have both and still fail under adverse circumstances. As for being at the bottom of the food chain, we're all down here with the folks who invested their life savings in Enron and the cops who roasted in Ford's (nothing wrong with them) Crown Vics. Unfortunately, too many people have trouble drawing the fine line between capitalist impulse and greed.

Hmmmm.....interesting analogy that last one.....the difference is that unlike the Enron investers, the only thing we've lost is a few hundred bucks for some buggy software....not our life savings. And unlike the Ford Crown Vic cops, we're still around and still truckin'! I suppose we should actually consider ourselves lucky when you think about it! :) It is about greed though....that's for sure!

Well I would argue that Steve Jobs is business savvy, but he's also Mac Evangelist number one. He's Apple's Kupa, people trust him. He's got "the vision thing" The fact that he got kicked off the board by the Pepsi kid, and the company went to hell had a lot to do with his success too. Apple are well known in the industry for kicking the faithfull in the teeth, if only Dell could inspire such cult like devotion, they'd be doing it too :P later jb

"Well I would argue that Steve Jobs is business savvy" Definitely. Having both in one person seems to ba a pretty rare comodity. Ken Olson had it at DEC once upon a time. Some would argue that Bill gates is the ultimate geek. Actually, being in the right place at the right time (when IBM was looking for a n OS for their new PC) helped immensely. Ever hear of a guy named gary Kildall? He had the OS (CP/M) that IBM wanted and basically, he didn't return their phone calls - the rest is history. Sometimes it'e better to be lucky than to be smart - or not to be dumb. "Apple are well known in the industry for kicking the faithfull in the teeth" Don't know, never got that particular religion. The true believers have that eerie Falwellian glow in their eyes that scares me.