Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=1667344

My Poser 5 jams on loading scenes or saved character combinations with several characters (say, a few fully-equipped divers) which my Poser 4 (4.0.3 without PPP) always handled successfully. That is unacceptable for me with the sort of scene that I make. How can I make my Poser 5 accept scenes with more characters in? It jammed on:- - A character which is 6 divers sitting in an inflatable boat. The boat is a character. - A .PZ3 file with 3 frogmen riding in my new subskimmer prop and 3 sport divers in the water (as at this link). -- My Poser 4 handled both successfully. When I use my Poser 4, after I installed Poser 5, Poser 4 comes up with the stage size and lights at factory default, and also all 3 lights turned off, regardless of what is specified in the ---.pz3 file, and the ground prop does not appear until I have clicked round a bit. That is likely due to Poser 5's workings interfering with Poser 4. Is there any way to cure this? Or do I have to uninstall Poser 5 and write its cost off to experience? I just tried to call my subskimmer scene .PZ3, using Poser 4. Up came an empty stage set to factory default but with all 3 lights switched off. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. I suspect that I will have to uninstall Poser 5 and then re-install Poser 4 to overwrite the damage that the Poser 5 caused.

I have the same trouble in P5 with many characters in a scene, it slows to a crawl and sometimes quits completely. P4/PP handles these same scenes with ease. I guess with P5 you're just stuck making smaller scenes. I, too, noticed changes in my P4 setup after installing P5 but I don't remember exactly what they were. However, they were nowhere near as bad as the problem you have. I woulnd't now how to fix it, sorry. Good luck.

Say it ain't so! I've been teetering on the cusp of ordering P5 the last few days, so this isn't what I wanted to hear. I was thinking most of this kind of thing had been worked out and P5 was pretty stable by now. Hopefully somebody will jump in here and straighten things out. Credit card back in the wallet for now -- I'll be watching this one to see if the fix for you is an acceptable one.

P5 needs a lot more memory. I have both PP and P5 on my computer, for precisely this reason. For scenes with a lot of characters, or very large textures, PP will handle scenes that P5 chokes on. But all in all, I prefer working in P5. I like the interface better. I like multiple runtimes. I love the power of the cloth room and the material room. And atmospheric effects! But when I want to do a render of the entire Dallas Cowboys football team, I don't do it in P5. There are ways to tweak your settings to maximize memory and speed things up. Make sure you have the latest service release installed. (And hopefully, SR4 - due at the end of this month, hopefully! - will fix even more problems.) Make sure your swap file is the right size for your system. Keep your main runtime lean and mean; install stuff into other runtimes instead. (Since you can, with P5.) Remove Content Paradise. As for the lights - it may be a memory issue. I've noticed Poser does weird things to the default settings file when it's having memory problems. I can switch between P5 and PP with no problem. (Though I've noticed that they open with different default cameras as the default.) I've never used P4, so I don't know how well it plays with P5. Why don't you post your system specs? People might have suggestions for you. CPU, hard drive space, RAM, OS, etc.?

Can't offer any advice, but I have what I consider to be a modest mid- to low-range system (Windows XP, Athlon XP 2000+, 512MB RAM, 120GB hard drive), and was recently able to construct and render a scene containing:

six characters -- the DAZ Charger and reindeer, Penny, a modified version of Victoria, and a couple of custom-made figures

additional figures like the DAZ Sleigh, reins, and reindeer harness, conforming clothing for Victoria and Penny, my conforming mane and transmapped tail figures, and the DAZ Cyclorama

Over a dozen props, including a dynamic clothing item I draped over the Charger

And I made use of displacement, specular mapping, and other advanced features, also. It took a while to render at 1600x1200, but it didn't choke.

P5 couldn't render the scene under Win98, but under WinXP handled things nicely.

Attached Link: http://www.runtimedna.com/messages.ez?forum_id=28

Anthony, check out my tips on five things to speed up poser 5, and I think you might get some use out of it. As a general rule, however, Poser 5 should NOT be installed to the same local folder as Poser 4 -- the two do not play well and are much more like siblings with issues than friendly players.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

I was one of the people that pre-ordered P5, what we got was a beta program that would barely run. I was not happy with it at all. SR3 made a big difference, but P5 still don`t work quite right, and I am anxiously awaiting SR4.

I hated it and took it off my computer. I pr-orded it too. My Kitty likes to play with it, it rolls real nice.

Love is Grandchildren.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=1667344

Results of some tests. - I am on a works pension and I have to watch the odd 50's and 100's, so I have to think carefully about spending. - I have Poser 4.0.3 without PPP. - I have Windows 98. I don't want the expense of upgrading my Windows unless I am VERY VERY VERY sure that the result won't have bugs or bad side effects or incompatibities. - I have Poser 5 including "Service Release 3 for Poser 5 by Curious Labs". - This link is my subskimmer scene. It contains 38 characters. 6 of them are wetsuitmen, 1 is my subskimmer boat, 2 are my raygun, the rest are diving gear of various file sizes. And 8 props including the ground (which I use recolored as the sea). - Poser 4 before I installed Poser 5 :: loaded and rendered OK.

---

• Poser 5: it jams if I try to load a scene that big, whether as a .PZ3 file or as a big multiple character. - - - - - -

• Poser 4 after I installed Poser 5:- (I reassigned the extension -.PZ3 to call Poser 4. I left the extension -.PZZ alone to call Poser 5.) - Clicking on a -.PZ3 file always results in an empty stage at factory default but with all 3 lights set "off". Also, when I click the little triangles below the stage, the names of the lights and ground don't appear until I have clicked around a bit. - Calling a big multiple character from library (6 divers in an inflatable boat): loaded to stage without complaint, but the lights stayed off and the stage stayed factory default size. - I copied my subskimmer scene --.PZ3 as --.CR2 but left its lights and cameras and universe etc in it. I moved the copy into one of my character library folders. I loaded it into my Poser 4. It loaded OK and the lights and the stage size and the stage background color went OK. - - - - - -

Please advise.

The biggest part of the new things in Poser 5 seems to be the materials system. The only time I needed anything like that was an army camouflage texture for my man in boilersuit (in a Sea Patrol scene), and I did that thus: In Bryce look straight down, texture the ground plane, render, save, use the result as a Poser 4 color texture map. Also, thank God that I had already copied my Poser 4 and Bryce 4 serial numbers onto another piece of paper, as I could not find the original boxes with them on, but I found that copy. (I have now copied them on again onto another piece of paper.) Of the people who ask for serial numbers, I suspect that some are genuine and not warez'ing.

Anthony, there is a BIG difference regarding memory handling between Win98/ME and 2000/XP. Poser5 definitely needs more memory than Poser4/PP. Even Poser4/PP behaves better on 2000/XP. Before investing anything in graphic software, upgrade to XP and get as much memory as possible. I have XP with 1GByte Memory and I don't have the problems other people have. I saw a lot of posts of people having problems with Poser, Vue or other applications here. A lot of them were using Win98/ME. It's very often a memory issue.

I agree with ynsaen poser 4 and poser 5 should be installed seperately as two seperate programs, you can still use the poser 4 stuff in poser 5 if you add the runtime to poser 5. You could use the poser 4 renderer in poser 5 if you don`t need the firefly renderer things. With poser 5 you can make the water have real reflections and with service release 3, the atmosphere tool is good for volumetric lights (the type where you see the beam).

I can't say anything about Poser 5, but I'd definitely recommend getting a newer OS. It was quite normal for me to reformat and reinstall Windows 98 every 12-18 months or so, but Windows 2000 is one of the best investments I've made for my PC. Everything just works better, and keeps on doing so. XP may be as good, but I haven't felt a pressing need to spend my own money to get whatever advantages it offers; I'm not really sure there are any.

What Bob said. P5 may never run very well under Win98. Either XP or 2000 would be much better.

Anthony; Check out any computer shows that come your way. You can obtain an OEM version of Win2kPro for around $80 US. As you have 98, if you wanted to you could set up 2k on a seperate partition, and have a dual boot system. That would give you all the backwards compatibility that XP claims, and the NT kernel benefits of 2k, which is what XP is built on.

I don't know that it's worth setting up a dual-boot system these days. It used to be, but because XP is based on NT, most programs these days run on 2000 just fine. My home computer is XP (recently upgraded from 98), and my office computer is 2000, and there's very little that won't run on both. Even most games run fine on 2000 nowadays.

Anyone who is contemplating P5 should read the threads here about it. It has problems. It's a memory hog and has (in my opinion) a memory leak. It's really too big a program to run on Win98 effectivly, since Win98 has memory limitations of it's own. It also requires a large swap file to handle files of any size. Many of it's advertised features do not work properly. It's slower than P4. We've had 3 major service releases, and are expecting a 4th. We're not even sure what the 4th service pack will fix (or break). DO NOT BUY P5 IF YOU THINK SR4 WILL SOLVE ALL OF THE P5 PROBLEMS! That said, is you have a big machine and are running Win2K or XP, it's not really that bad. The Firefly engine does some very nice rendering (when it works). The material, cloth, and setup rooms are great. True, face and hair suck, but we can't really expect it to work as advertised, can we?

Hair doesn't suck. You just have to futz around with the settings a lot. (See Stew's amazing rat fur over at the DAZ forums!) And the atmospheric settings are really cool, too. I bet Anthony could do some awesome underwater effects with the atmospheric settings...

I use poser 5 with windows 98SE with no problems, though I have not actually tried rendering 6 figures with it yet.

Personally I've never had any of the major problems with 5 that I've read about in various threads. I've rendered scenes with MANY Daz Generation 3 characters (up to 9 is all I've tried so far) all clothed and "accessorized" plus environmental props and characters. I've done this boh in firefly (a vastly superior renderer to the p4 renderer if you configure it properly) and in p4 renderer with very few problems (mostly with high poly hair models) I usually have photoshop open in the background. My machine is hardly "top of the line" . It only a 1.5 GHZ with 768 MB ram. I think the key here is XP. 98 just doent handle memory as well as xp does. XP isn't a panacea but I think it will help you out immensely. That combined with seperating your p4 and p5 should benefit you quite a bit. Yes P5 has a small memery leak, but its nothing that can't be purged with free utilities. If you think p5 is memory intensive, try maya or 3ds. You might as well not even have IE running with either of those two.

My computer's the opposite for some reason... if I try to bring 3 V2 characters into Poser 4, they will start coming in with body parts missing but with Poser 5 I can bring in 8-10 V2 characters with no problems. Don't know why but I always had bugs with P4 but have only ever had 1 crash with P5 in the year and a half I've used it.

I have had no problems with poser 5 since I installed sr3 and I use win98se. I would recommend anyone who hasn`t downloaded sr3 to get it now.

When installing new things, props, figures etc, I install them into poser 4, that way they can be used in poser 4 AND poser 5. If you install them into poser 5 then they wont work in poser 4 too. Of course, if it is a poser 5 only thing then I will install it in the poser 5 folder.

"Say it ain't so! I've been teetering on the cusp of ordering P5 the last few days, so this isn't what I wanted to hear." It isn't an intrinsic problem with Poser5. Look, in a lot of ways P5 is a bigger proram than P4. It has an entirely new rendering system, dynamic hair and cloth and completely node based materials system. So it is a bit much to expect it to run on a 6 year old operating system (win 98) and a smallish computer without problems. If you can't affort a reasonably modern OS or to keep your hardware up to date then you might need to accept that there will be problems for youw ith a lot of software, not just Poser5. It's unfortunate, but true. Developers simply cannot always code for the stuff from half a decade ago.

I have to say that despite my misgivings about P5 I bit the bullet and bought the damn thing. And... I love it! It has a few weird quirks but nothing major. I think the firefly renderer is reasonably fast for what it does, too. I've known P4PP take longer to render a few seemingly complex scenes. I'm running on a 1GB XP machine and I'd recommend XP to anyone using Poser 4/PP or P5 on a PC. My P4PP ran like a sick dog on 98 but really improved when I upgraded the machine and OS.

Coppula eam se non posit acceptera jocularum.

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{My Kitty likes to play with it, it rolls real nice. } I thought this list would be a bit off-topic, but since someone else mentioned it... 10) Play "spot the not" with the box: read the list of features on back of the box and check off the ones that are (still) not working properly. 9) The Poser 5 box on the shelf makes you look like a professional graphic designer. 8) The listing of features on the box makes it sound like you have a powerful "character solution" software. 7) The manual is thick enough to prop up that wobbly table. 6) The manual is thick enough to use as a decent paperweigh. 5) "Spot the not" with the manual: follow the chapters and see how many instructions don't work the way they're supposed to. 4) Play a rousing game of "How long until it crashes". Open P5, load some figures, start posing, and see how long it takes until it crashes. Prizes will be awarded to people who can keep it running longed than the currect record of 10 minutes. 3) The CD has an excellent refective surface, perfect for use as a mirror. 2) The CD make an excellent mini-frisbee. And the #1 fun thing to do with Poser 5: 1) Cry about the fact that you paid $350 for piece of software that you won't use because it's so buggy and that the company won't take back even though it probably violates the implied warranty of being a usable product. Oh, wait, this isn't fun. This is sad. When is Poser 6 supposed to come out?

(1) I uninstalled Poser 5. After that and a badly overdue defragment run, my Poser 4.0.3 starts up correctly now. It still acts up on very big .PZ3's, but I can dodge that. Copy, rename the copy as ---.CR2 , put it in a character library, start Poser, load the .CR2 file to stage. Its cameras and lights etc will overrule those that were in the startup. (2) I'll re-install my Poser 5 when Curious Labs brings up a downloadable upgrade that can run at least as many characters and props on stage as Poser 4 can, including under Windows 98. Some people can't keep on buying more Windowses (let alone more computers) and having to reinstall all their software and files every time they upgrade.

lol, I've had poser 5 open (complete with scene editing/rendering/animating/etc) literally for the last 72+ hours, no problems.... I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's not the utter crap many purport it to be.

IMHO, two things tend to cause the bulk of problems with Poser 5, and those two things are the reason I wrote the 5 Things bit. The first of those two reasons for issues is the software environment. Most systems are either off the shelf and cluttered with mfg crud, or home built and cluttered with "utilities" crud to make things work "better". The second of these is the fact that P5 is not P4: it doesn't act like P4, it doesn't look like P4, it doesn't do things the way P4 did them, it doesn't do what for four years P4 did and everyone got really used to and figured out and all sorts of good stuff. It requires you to stop and learn it's stuff. Not always a happy thing, as when you know you can do something really quick and easily in P4, and then you go to P5 and you find that your shortcuts are gone, it really sorta pisses you off. Them's the breaks. My hubby used a certain card program for years. Then, one day, the maker of that program put in a lot of new features and changed the way it looked. Hubby had a cow when I installed it on his system (at his request) and wanted me to take it off. I said no. It took him 6 months to figure it out, but now he gets more done, faster, and he likes the results better. But he did sorta set it aside for a couple months. It heped that he kept seeing me do cool things with it (on purpose) becuase then he wanted to know how. That's the other issue. The environmental issue with it is one that also gets folks upset, because we all have things we like to have running -- little things that help us out, and do other tasks for us. Hubby has about six of them he swears he can't live without, and gee, his system isn't quite as friendly to stuff like P5. Anthony, I will take a look at your scene later today and see what I can come up with. My system is an Athlon 2400+ with 384MB of RAM on XP. I've done some really complex scenes before with it, and I think I could likely come close. And, by the way - you've made some great stuff. Thanks for sharing them :)

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

Attached Link: http://www.delorie.com

Re message 26, it is time the Poser software source form was made public like the Gnu software is, so that many people can look at it in spare time and find and correct bugs and inefficiencies etc in it. Re 4) in message 26: even in my short usage of Poser 5, I had crashes.

John, I got a laugh out of your top ten list. You could even add 1 - if you hang up your Poser CD in your garden, it may scare pesky birds away from your fruit trees, when its shiny side rotates in the wind. But seriously, you can't collect from (or sue) a software company for a defective product, because all their licenses have a clause that states explicitly that the software is not guaranteed to work. Whether it's Windows XP, Poser or some other 3D software, the vendors are never gonna guarantee that it will work. One tip for those with problems: it may boil down to the OS. IOW, Poser is not compatible with the closed-source, security-flawed Windows OS. Ask owners of other machines with some other OS if they have the same problems. If they don't, maybe you might consider switching.

I don't understand why people keep making excuses for poorly-written software. "IMHO, two things tend to cause the bulk of problems with Poser 5...The first of those two reasons for issues is the software environment. Most systems are either off the shelf and cluttered with mfg crud, or home built and cluttered with "utilities" crud to make things work "better". Why then do many people having trouble with P5 don't experience problems with their other programs? In my case: Photoshop 6 & 7, Carrara 1.1, Vue4, Bryce4, Painter 7, MS Office XP Developer's Edition, various games, etc, etc, etc. Why is it that only P5 requires a stripped machine? "The second of these is the fact that P5 is not P4: it doesn't act like P4, it doesn't look like P4, it doesn't do things the way P4 did them..." I disagree. It's been pretty much established that P5 IS P4 with some very minor changes and a bunch of 3rd party apps tacked on. Same program core, same bugs. LOL @ JohnRender!!!

"4) Play a rousing game of "How long until it crashes". Open P5, load some figures, start posing, and see how long it takes until it crashes. Prizes will be awarded to people who can keep it running longed than the currect record of 10 minutes." Current record for me is over three days -- poser up the whole whole time, with likely 9 hours a day of posing while I created an animation set. Except, darn, you know, it never crashed... Amazingly sad. I'm out of this thread.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

Poser 5 has some great features, the cloth room is excellent, the materials are great and they are much more advanced than in p4 you can do reflections in renders and make a fur effect with the displacement mapping. The firefly renderer is very good too. It is not just "p4 with some minor changes". I am sick of hearing people complaining about it.

Would it be fair to say that most of the power-users of P5 still bounce back and forth between it and older versions?

That's what its sounding like so far. Either folks put it back on the shelf for now or, if they stuck with it, still have one foot in P4 & PP. (that's not too bad, I could deal with that).

I must confess I do still use poser 4 with propack too. I use it for making figures as it is slightly faster than p5 and I don`t have to change the screen resolution to use propack.

Personally never owned p4. Played with it on a work computer a while ago (before p5 was out) and didnt care for it. It felt too limited, especially in the texturing,rendering and the lighting aspect (I'm used to maya's node based texturing). The lighting in p5 still needs a lot of work, but the other aspects have improved hugely. Yes it initially had it's problems, but all things factored in, it's a pretty decent package now. Especially considering the price compared to other 3d "character solutions"

I never owned P4 or PP, so I can't compare there,but Poser 5 isn't for everyone, that's certain. Reading the posts is helpful as it will help one decide if you should get it or not. Most of the problems being experienced with P5 seem to be OS or hardware related it. I recently upgraded to SR3 and added another 512 ram to a 1.7ghz PIV running XP Pro. I now have 1G of ram and it runs a lot smoother than it did previously. Xp does manage memory way better than W98. I can't imagine using P5 on a Windows 9x machine. Some have been able to make it work, but my guess is they are in the minority. P5 does demand a lot of resources. Consequently, I don't think CL should have recommended P5 be run on a machine that does not have XP or Windows 2000 or at anything less than 512 ram (256 would be an absolute minimum) I read those ridiculous minimum requirements on the box after I got it and installed it and laughed! I've also noticed that people with 3 ghz machines and the new HT systems and tons of ram are also seeing some issues. Poser 5 seems to run best on 1.5-2.8 ghz PIV machines with 1-2 G of ram, running XP Pro. Other issues that people have are related to some unresolved "bugs" or "limitations" in the program that have to do with lights, textures, etc. Those can be identified and "worked around" following some of the tips posted by Yaensen here and over at RDNA and Poser Pros.

As has already been mentioned in this thread, I hope that SR4 will address some of these problems.

Something To Do At 3:00AM 

"It is not just "p4 with some minor changes"." Xantor, I never said it was. If you're going to quote me, please be accurate. I said P5, "IS P4 with some very minor changes and a bunch of 3rd party apps tacked on..." And your statement: "Poser 5 has some great features, the cloth room is excellent, the materials are great and they are much more advanced than in p4 you can do reflections in renders and make a fur effect with the displacement mapping. The firefly renderer is very good too" contains some of the very 3rd party technology I was talking about. I don't "complain" about P5...I merely report my experiences with it and that of others when people ask. And if you're that sick about complaints anyway, I'd suggest you stay away from threads titled, "I am not very pleased with Poser 5." What did you think you'd find in this thread? Nothing but compliments and praise?

I don't know if I'd be considered a power user, but I find myself using PP less and less as time goes by. I just find it difficult and clunky to use, because I'm so used to P5 now. I use it once in awhile; it is faster. And it's convenient for importing stuff to Vue. (Don't have to worry about which runtime something's in, because there's only one!) But if it vanished tomorrow, I'd hardly miss it. It's probably been weeks since I last used it. And I've kept Poser 5 open and running for days on end, and haven't had a problem. There is a slight memory leak, but IME, it becomes a problem only if you do repeated renderings with very large textures. All in all, I've found P5 (under XP) to be pretty stable. Much more so that PP under Win98 was.

Would it be fair to say that most of the power-users of P5 still bounce back and forth between it and older versions? I don't know if fairness would be involved, but I still have both installed on my system, and use them both ... mainly to ensure backward-compatibility with my freebies.

I tried a similar scene with 6 scuba divers and the skimmer and it took a long time just to cancel the scene, it looks like it is just a memory problem (not enough). I use windows 98se and I have 128mb of memory, that used to be a lot of memory but nowadays it isn`t really enough, especially for 3d apps.

Purchase Vue, and render your scene in that.

I believe that you will find that your rendering problems will go away. Or, wait for SR4, and see what that does.

Something To Do At 3:00AM 

I've been using Poser since Version 1, and for most things, I still use Poser 4. Poser 5 has some great stuff in it, but I don't enjoy using the software. If CL would take the time to fix the following two issues alone, I'd probably retire Poser 4 and dance a jig in my office:

1. Keyboard shortcuts. Poser 5 does not play nice with Windows. In Version 5, CL somehow managed to bugger up the program's window hierarchy so that the parameter window's input events don't filter through the main application window anymore. Indeed, the parameter window almost behaves like it's a separate application, to the point of having its own button on the Windows taskbar sometimes. :-P As a consequence of all this, keystrokes are handled differently depending on whether the parameter window or the document window has focus, and many of the shortcuts just don't work if you're in the parameter window. No, you have to go and click in the document window first, being careful not to click on something and screw up your present selection. Then press the key again. You really notice this if you spend a lot of time tweaking pose dials while hopping between cameras. "Why isn't the view changing? Argh!" (click) ctrl-M, then mouse back to the dials. "Argh, that click selected a different part!" (click) Adjust a dial... "OK, let's see it in the posing camera." ctrl-, ... "ARGH!" (click) It didn't used to be this broken.

The programmers could have avoided this mess. I suppose CL will say it's a limitation of whatever busted cross-platform windowing toolkit they used for the implementation. I keep hoping that the Poser will behave more like a robust Windows application with each successive release, but Poser 5 was actually a step backward in this regard.

2. ABYSMALLY SLOW file operations. What the hell happened? I know that Poser files are large, but P4 can handle them a lot faster than P5 does. I can load an "all head morphs" injection pose very quickly in P4; the same operation in P5 goes on for minutes. Load a scene... same story. And then there's the occasional time that P5 just decides to hang after it has saved a file. Thank God the data appears to be all there, because when this happens, I have to kill P5 from the Task Manager and restart it.

Now... I am not an idiot and I am not running the software on some slow, underpowered system clogged with crappy utilities. Poser 5 is, bar none, the slowest, creakiest graphics application in my tool set. If Curious Labs would address the basic issues of efficiency and robustness, Poser 5 would be enormously more pleasant for me to use, other known bugs notwithstanding.

Another bad thing about poser 5 is that it uses a lot of memory, even when you aren`t doing much. Anthony another way to do a "composite" picture, render the skimmer and the three crew and the water, then use that picture as the background and render the three front figures seperately, though because they are in the water, you would have to do some postwork with a drawing program to fix the picture.

Play a rousing game of "How long until it crashes". Open P5, load some figures, start posing, and see how long it takes until it crashes. Prizes will be awarded to people who can keep it running longed than the currect record of 10 minutes."

What's my prize? My record so far is about 6 days. That's rendering and posing and scene creation about 11 hours a day for all six days. Then again since it didn't actually crash (I exited it cause I was done) I suppose that doesn't count.

• Poser 5 - $350
• Computer - $1,100
• Poser figures and props - $100
• Complaining endlessly on the internet about how bad your experience has been? Priceless.

"Cry about the fact that you paid $350 for piece of software that you won't use because it's so buggy and that the company won't take back even though it probably violates the implied warranty of being a usable product."

It's too bad the wont take it back since your system seems to be incapable of running it well. It is always unfortunate when someone can't get use out of something they paid for. But it sure isn't CL's fault that your system won't stay stable with this tool.

Poser 5 is stable for a lot of people. Would it be better if it was stable for everyone? Sure. But since it is as stable as Max and Maya I am fairly satisfied for the price.

You're upset? Fine. You want to be vocal about it? Go for it. But realize that this particular horse is losing steam as more and more people start to get over their initial upset and realize P5 is a capable, stable upgrade with some good features.

"I'll re-install my Poser 5 when Curious Labs brings up a downloadable upgrade that can run at least as many characters and props on stage as Poser 4 can, including under Windows 98."

There is simply no reason or method for companies to continue to try and add features and still support obsolete systems that are more than 5 years out of date.

I know that the speed of evolution in the computer field is confusing to some, but its a fact of life... and I don't want ANY company, CL included, to continually have to hold back their software to keep those who won't or can't upgrade happy.

Just like I stopped designing websites that worked in IE 1, or Netscape 3, or on 640x400 screens. The world moves on.

"I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's not the utter crap many purport it to be.""

Complaining about new software versions is a common Internet pastime. You see it in EVERY product. Each new version of Maya and Max there are a host of people complaining that features don't work, that stability sucks, that it is slow or bloated and refusing to upgrade.

It will never end, and there is no way to avoid it. Change is not something everyone enjoys... and when you couple that with the trend of people billeting what they want to believe about the "next version" there will always be upset and disappointment. This sort of complaint is not unique to Poser, or Curious Labs. Every upgrade of every tool ever released faces similar complaining.

Before SR3 there may have been some validity? Now? None really.

"it is time the Poser software source form was made public like the Gnu software is, so that many people can look at it in spare time and find and correct bugs and inefficiencies etc in it."

Because the answer to making a complex program better is to kill the company that develops it, let a billion programmers of varying skills and talents make changes to it that no one will really review and then expect us all to put the result on our machines? no thanks.

Only a very, very few programs that have been open sourced benefited from the process - and almost all of those had massive corporate backing and professional, full time development staffs. Open source Poser and it dies instantly as a tool with any future.

"Poser is not compatible with the closed-source, security-flawed Windows OS"

Really? I guess the fact that my Windows (and those of my clients) are secure, stable and fast and that the machines I run Poser on run it perfectly is an illusion :)

OS wars - the other type of internet zealotry :)

"I don't understand why people keep making excuses for poorly-written software."

Because in this case P5 is no more or less buggy than any other large, complex tool. Bugs of some degree are inevitable in large software - not package is immune to them no matter how much it costs. There is not a single P5 bug that causes me a moments problem during my work with it - not one.

However Poser 5 IS a tool that does tax a computer as much as Max does (for example) and while that may not be a good thing, it isn't a bug. A lot of people complain and moan about Max being buggy too - and most of the time it is old or out-dated hardware or software.

Poser 5 represents hundreds of thousands of lines of code that interacts with literally millions of lines of code from many other vendors (video drivers, operating system files, third part data files and so on). That there are, in all that interaction among all that code by all those people some complex and somewhat inconsistent interaction is inevitable.

And it always will be in complex systems.

Computers are deterministic and lend themselves absolutely to analysis by logic. However the number of factors involved in the proper functioning of large software systems is a variable count measured in the millions at some levels of detail.

"Why is it that only P5 requires a stripped machine?"

It doesn't. While it is a common diagnostic or suggestion for people to go through the normal "chicken dance" of antivirus and declutter ting and so on, the reality is that Poser 5 runs just fine on many machines with no special preparation at all.

I run Poser 5 alongside and at the same time as Max, Photoshop, Maya, Outlook, Dreamweaver  and Visual Studio constantly. I have NEVER had to defrag, de-crud or in any other way strip down or alter my machine for any of those programs, P5 included.

"Would it be fair to say that most of the power-users of P5 still bounce back and forth between it and older versions?"

No. Of those I know who are Poser "power users" that I know enough about to know the work habits stay in Poser 5 all the time. A vendor may go back to Poser 4 to check their products compatibility, but that is becoming less and less common and will fade away in the future as P4 eventually, finally, goes the way of the dodo.

"I can load an "all head morphs" injection pose very quickly in P4; the same operation in P5 goes on for minutes."

Have you copied the !DAZ folder to the P5 runtime? This is a known flaw with the Daz injection method used in V3 and M3. It's one of the problems with Daz deciding not to officially support P5.

A "All morphs injection" takes just under 30 seconds on my machine or less depending on what I am running other than P5.

"But since it is as stable as Max..." Excuse me, but I used to use Max and had nowhere near the trouble I have with P5. "realize that this particular horse is losing steam as more and more people start to get over their initial upset and realize P5 is a capable, stable upgrade with some good features. You're right...the "complaints" are dwindling. But it isn't because people are "getting over their initial upset." It's because fewer and fewer people are bothering to post their problems. They're tired of being called whiners and complainers and tired of arguing with brick walls. There are people who don't post here at all since the initial P5 release debacle. Maybe they gave up on Poser alltogether or just on Rosity. I know at least one who got banned for bashing P5. This is probably what the original CL crew hoped for...complacence over time. And it's happening. "There is simply no reason or method for companies to continue to try and add features and still support obsolete systems that are more than 5 years out of date." Is there a reason for a company to tell the truth? The P5 box says it will run under Windows 98 and ME. No user of either one should have to upgrade their OS to get P5 to work. "Because in this case P5 is no more or less buggy than any other large, complex tool." WHOA!!! Wrongo!!! Please refer to my post #32 in which I state: "Why then do many people having trouble with P5 don't experience problems with their other programs? In my case: Photoshop 6 & 7, Carrara 1.1, Vue4, Bryce4, Painter 7, MS Office XP Developer's Edition..." "Bugs of some degree are inevitable in large software" Maybe so but I hang around forums for many other software packages and have never seen the tide of complaints and problems like P5 has had. Not even close. Soulhuntre, it's obvious to me P5 works well for you and many others. But it should be just as obvious to you that it doesn't work very well for others. I worked in software and hardware installations and instructions for over 15 years and have never seen anything as bad as P5. Hell, even some of the people who worked with CL on P5 have decried what happened. Making excuses and blaming the user and/or his/her machine doesn't help get the problem fixed.

Poser 5 does work with windows 98, the biggest problem for me is that I don`t have enough memory to use it properly (128 megabytes).

"Excuse me, but I used to use Max and had nowhere near the trouble I have with P5."

That doesn't really change anything. Like P5 some peopel have huge problems with Max 6 for instance that had no problem with Max 5, Maya peopel have the same complaints. On most machines it works fine, on some it barely works at all with others falling in between. It is exactly equivlelent.

"Maybe so but I hang around forums for many other software packages and have never seen the tide of complaints and problems like P5 has had. Not even close"

I have, all the time :) It's a semi religious issue - go hit Slashdot sometime and see them complain about windows, office and anything else they dislike. You'd be amazed windows runs AT ALL after listening to them.

"Soulhuntre, it's obvious to me P5 works well for you and many others. But it should be just as obvious to you that it doesn't work very well for others. I worked in software and hardware installations and instructions for over 15 years and have never seen anything as bad as P5."

Then your experience is limited.

I have seen tools much more expensive than P5 that were much "worse", I have even seen machines where Max and Maya were much, much less stable than P5 is on the same machine. Life is like that. If your experience is as extensive as you claim then you must be aware that whether or not a machine can run "office" for instance is not a great diagnostic tool for a complex 3d application.

"Making excuses and blaming the user and/or his/her machine doesn't help get the problem fixed."

And making blanket, untrue statements that the software is universally problematic, buggy or unusable doesn't do it either. The reality is that on SOME machines P5 is horrible but on others is is just fine.

Just like most other complex software systems.

When someone says "I couldn't get P5 to run on my machine" I rarely if ever comment that they are wrong. When someone says "P5 doesn't run on my machine, therefore it is a defective piece of _____ that no one anywhere can ever use" I have to step in and correct their assertion.

BTW - I have no problem supporting the idea that CL should remove WinME and Win98 from the list and simply say that it "may" run on those systems. They are obsolete and no longer actively supported - they should simply die like the dinosaurs they are. Supporting them is a waste of time and resources for CL.

"Then your experience is limited." 15 years not enough? How about hundreds of machines, thousands of installations, unknown years as a programmer and writer and 4 years as an instructor? What is your experience? "And making blanket, untrue statements that the software is universally problematic, buggy or unusable doesn't do it either" I agree. I don't make "blanket, untrue statements." But you do. Here's an example just from this thread: "Because in this case P5 is no more or less buggy than any other large, complex tool" IMO, that is a blanket, VERY untrue statement. Again, please refer to my post #32 where I state: "Why then do many people having trouble with P5 don't experience problems with their other programs? In my case: Photoshop 6 & 7, Carrara 1.1, Vue4, Bryce4, Painter 7, MS Office XP Developer's Edition, various games, etc, etc, etc...?"

The fact that Curiouslabs is still trying to correct problems after what... 18 months speaks volumes to me. soulhuntre, We're all happy that you are having a pleasurable experience with P5, but wrapping it back to "it's all good" undermines the valid concerns that the user base seems to have. Is there a problem with trying to let a company know of customer complaints?

"15 years not enough?"

It has nothing to do with how long. You may have a billion installations and a thousand years, but if you "have never seen anything as bad as P5" (your quote) then you're experience is limited because I can assure you that Poser5 is far from the buggiest piece of software ever to see consumer release. If nothing else, Windows 1.0 disproves the claim :)

If you are honestly going to claim that P5 is the single buggies piece of software you have ever seen, then your experience is limited. That's not an insult, just a fact.

"IMO, that is a blanket, VERY untrue statement."

Not in my experience. And in absence of specific third party metrics all we have to go on is our experience. Now, you and I can trade resumes all day and it wont change anything - you have your experiences and I have mine. Those reading or viewing this thread will draw their own conclusions.

"Again, please refer to my post #32 where I state: "Why then do many people having trouble with P5 don't experience problems with their other programs?"

Nothing about that statement has anything to do with measuring how buggy P5 is. For instance some game engines have had bugs that were very specific to specific set of circumstances... the engines were not in fact very "buggy" as the number of bugs was small... yet the bug was noticeable under those circumstances. In other cases, the bug was not in the game itself, but in the video drivers or the operating system.

In reality, the fact that a user may not experience problems with other programs is no indication of how buggy or not buggy a specific program may be. It is simply one piece of diagnostic information.

"The fact that Curiouslabs is still trying to correct problems after what... 18 months speaks volumes to me."

The Linux codebase routinely fixes bugs that are almost a decade old in some cases. Windows 98 was getting patches till the end of it's life after 5 years for bugs. No trivial program is bug free, and none of them ever will be.

The issue with most reported P5 bugs seems to be that they are specific to system factors, and while they may represent real bugs in the P5 code base they do not, in fact, indicate that the bug is obvious or glaring. The opposite in fact, most of the bugs seem to be subtle (code wise) and hard to diagnose specifically because they are not consistently reproducible on other systems.

"but wrapping it back to "it's all good" undermines the valid concerns that the user base seems to have"

No where in here have I states "it's all good" or that there were no bugs or issues to be addressed in P5. No where in here did I state the program was bug free or perfect. No where in here did I tell people not to bring their concerns to the community or Curious Labs.

What I >have< taken issue with are the assertions that P5 is the buggiest program ever released,  that the program is fundamentally unusable by >anyone< and the assertion that the majority of those using the program experience these bugs.

My position, consistently, has been thus:

• Poser 5 has bugs, like all complex software
• These bugs are (for the most part) configuration specific
• A minority of users find that Poser 5 is not usable on their systems and this is unfortunate
• A lot of us are using Poser5 in a stressful (for Poser) manner and not experiencing most these bugs at all

I really don't see why any of that is causing great distress or making people ignored or attacked.

Hey, I noticed I have been makign a number of large posts of late - and that possibly some of the combativeness of the OT forum has maybe creeped into my posts on this thread. Anyway, if I came down a bit harsh, I apologize and I'll try and keep any future replies inthis thread shorter :)

People are entitled to get annoyed. After spending to buy Poser 5, I find that I can't use it for the sort of image that I make. Poser 5 should have been written to accept as many characters on stage as Poser 4 can, including on Windows 98, since very many people satill have Windows 98. Many people can't afford to keep on buying more Windowses or more computers. Also, the CR2 language to handle Poser 5 nodes should have been made much more compact. The size of a Poser 5 uncompressed .CR2 for an ordinary model such as the Businessman, is unbelievable.

There is simply no reason or method for companies to continue to try and add features and still support obsolete systems that are more than 5 years out of date. For many people, new systems (hardware or software) is serious expense and the thing bought has to last several years like with furniture etc.

I am gonna have to keep this short to keep my promise :)

"Poser 5 should have been written to accept as many characters on stage as Poser 4 can, including on Windows 98, since very many people satill have Windows 98. Many people can't afford to keep on buying more Windowses or more computers."

Poser 5 can hold as many characters as Poser 4, you just need a fairly recent computer to do so. There is no way to keep advancing software and supporting Win98. It just can't be done. Win98 lacks basic, fundamental features needed by memory intensive programs like moderately advanced 3D systems under heavy load. The amount of extra code needed to try would be huge, and the effort would be doomed to fail.

"Also, the CR2 language to handle Poser 5 nodes should have been made much more compact. The size of a Poser 5 uncompressed .CR2 for an ordinary model such as the Businessman, is unbelievable."

It's the trade off for an open, easily modified and human readable format. The solution was to allow users to compress those files, and it is a good compromise.

It is unfortunate that many people cannot afford to upgrade their machines, and they will simply have accept that at some point that means they will not be able to run the current software.

Im running poser5 on a waaaay underspeced system in Mac OSx and its as stable as the poser4 propack its understamdibly slow as hell(300MHZ+352megs RAM) I believe the homogenous nature of MAC Hardware has helped the stability of P5 MAC OSX. and at the $89 upgrade price its a joy to do cloth animations that are far superior and better implmented than Cinema4D's $500 allegged Cloth"Dynamsic" plugin :-( Cant wait to run P5 On a new G5 !!

My website

YouTube Channel

lured back in by a kind little bird, and Soulhuntre has done exemplary in his posts, so all I have to add is this: Windows 98 is no longer supported by Microsoft. This Summer, Windows ME will cease to be supported. This means that companies which make software for those platforms cannot get any kind of support from MS in ensuring further compatibility and in making bugfixes -- somethign MS does for free for many companies at this time with products they do support. Once the support life ends, the software is dead. Dead as a doornail. Supporting it is a waste of time, effort, and resources from a business perspective, as it's very much like throwing good money after bad. And I am glad I did leave the thread -- I missed the post above my last one, and had I been here for the following, I would have been Troll baiting. Much rather spend my time working to help folks enjoy the software.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/ lists 2 versions of Windows XP:- WINDOWS XP HOME EDITION, 180 WINDOWS XP PROFESSIONAL EDITION, 260 What is the difference in performance etc between them to justify the different price?

It isnt a problem with windows 98 that your scene doesnt work properly, it is a memory problem. 128 megabytes of memory just isnt enough nowadays, though memory chips are a lot cheaper now to buy so maybe you could buy more memory? I only have 128 megabytes and I cant afford to buy a new memory chip, but it seems like that would be the best way to fix it, or else buy a newer version of that rubbishy mess they call windows...

Attached Link: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/howtobuy/choosing2.asp

AnthonyAppleyard: I've pasted a link that will describe the differences. I have XP Pro on my Poser Machine and XP Home on a work machine (A Compaq Presario). Remote networking can be done in XPPro but not XPHome. Not much of an issue for Poser. XP Pro has some advanced management features that XP Home does not. Also not a big deal for using Poser. The multi-processor support of XP Pro is a plus, but for Poser is probably not going to help much. I think either version would be a vast improvement over Windows 98. The posts here suggest that XP Home works just as well with P5 as XP Pro. Now.....I'm going to give you my personal opinion on upgrading an old computer to XP. If your computer is older generation hardware and does not have "at least" 512 mb of ram....don't do it. Also, IMHO, you should have at least a 1.5 ghz PIV processor. Ignore what it says on that XP box. In my opinion Microsoft, like CL, lists totally unrealistic "minimum requirements" on their product boxes. If you have a reasonably fast processor, a decent amount of ram, and a large harddrive (say 20 Gig) do a clean install (remove Windows 98....f-disk) and start over. If you don't know how to do this, get someone to do it who has done it before. XP is a totally different OS from 9X. For example, it does not use the FAT32 file system, but rather NTFS, the set up for upgrading and registering is totally different and it handles memory differently. All vestiges of 9x need to go. If you can afford it, a new computer would be the better option. Poser 5 needs (in this order), lots of Ram (1 gig seems the best), a fast processor (1.5-2 ghz PIV seems the best). Video cards don't matter for Poser 5 (but will if you ever decide to use DAZ Studio!). The harddrive is only important in terms of space.....as you know, P5 takes up a lot of space and so does XP :) Also, if you decide to go with a new machine, get a decent power supply and a well vented case. I have a 300 Watt power system and lots of vents on the case of my current machine and it works fine. I also have good fans.....not those plastic, bearingless crappers that burn out once a year and can put your system at risk.

'Windows 98 is no longer supported by Microsoft. This Summer, Windows ME will cease to be supported. This means that companies which make software for those platforms cannot get any kind of support from MS in ensuring further compatibility and in making bugfixes -- somethign MS does for free for many companies at this time with products they do support.' sorry but had to correct this Microsoft have extended the support period until 2006. to quote - "Windows 98 wins support lifeline Windows 98: A favourite with many Microsoft has granted its venerable Windows 98 software a reprieve. The software giant was planning to end support for the product on 16 January but has now changed its mind. The turn off date has now been extended to 30 June 2006 following protests by some developing nations who are keen users of the ageing operating system. Extended support means users must pay for help to solve problems but Microsoft will issue free patches to counter serious security threats. " full story here - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3392559.stm

xantor suggests adding more ram. That will definitely help, "if" your motherboard and processor can handle it! Most machines have limits to how much ram you can add. You need to read the documentation that came with your machine and see what those limits are before adding anything. Ignoring those limits will create an entirely new set of problems. It would help a lot to know what kind of computer (besides the OS) that you are running P5 on :)

Crumbs, this thread has run. Perhaps I have saved a few people from spending on Poser 5 and then having to uninstall it and put it on the top shelf for spiders to spin webs on.

I sit corrected.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

For anyone who says things like: {These bugs are (for the most part) configuration specific } Please, please tell me what the correct "configuration" is. I routinely create 18"x24", 300dpi images in Photoshop with no problems. I create 2-3 minute animations in Lightwave using HyperVoxels, fire, and smoke effects. Poser 4 works perfectly (well, except for the usual bugs, but at least it doesn't crash). I have a Sony VAIO, 3Ghz dual Pentium 4 Hyper-Thread, 160G hard drive, 512M RAM, and Windows XP Pro. So, how do I change my system so that it is the correct "configuration" for Poser 5? These other, more complex, programs have no problems at all with my system. Why should Poser 5? It's rendering engine and modelling features are vastly inferior to Lightwave, yet Lightwave works perfectly. I agree with the above poster who said that the complaints about P5 have died down because people are tired of being told that it's their fault. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to play with the registry or virtual memory settings or the system BIOS or some other arcane setting just so ONE program will work properly.

And just a follow-up to people who claim that they can't afford to upgrade from Windows 98 to XP: you can't expect modern software to work on older operating systems. And to be quite blunt, you say you can't "afford" the upgrade, yet you can afford 3-d rendering software. And I'm assuming you can also afford the Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro that you use for post-work. And you can probably "afford" all the stuff you purchase here or at DAZ. But a new operating system that would boost Poser's abilities 1000%? Nope, too expensive. Windows 2000 is very cheap and works with 99.999% of the stuff out there (printers, peripherals, etc). So the claim that your printer won't work with the new OS doen't fly. It may be true that XP doesn't have the correct printer drivers, but 2000 does.

ahhhh, nothing like good old fashioned poser trolls....

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)

Drat! I had a nice post going, then something got buggered up and it was lost! Well, I'll just sum it up. I agree with JohnRender. Too many people get caught up in software gluttony, and don't prepare for the occasional infrastructure (OS and hardware) upgrades that will eventually be required. If you don't have the money, I sympathize with you. But that doesn't change the fact that you need to be responsible to yourself and plan for big expenses. 3D graphics is a big hobby/lifestyle/way to make a living, and so you can expect to occasionally have big expenses. I know that what I say next will sound overly simplistic and maybe a bit hard-hearted on my part, but it is, in fact, the prescription for the problem. And I offer this with only the best of intentions and love for all of you fine folks: Either decrease your other costs (rent, food, bad habits such as smoking, drinking, eating out too often, or getting tattoos), or increase your income (find a second job, deliver newspapers, work weekends someplace). If you are carrying high-interest consumer debt such as credit cards, 90-day-same-as-cash loans (that you couldn't pay off in 90 days), or high-interest loans of any type, then you need to pay those off as soon as possible. Until your consumer debt is paid off, you probably should NOT be making non-essential purchases of any kind. Think about this: If you have just $10,000 in credit card debt, you could be getting dinged for upwards of $300 or more per month in finance charges! So if you have finance problems, do yourself a huge favor. Find out where your money is going, how much you need (or want), and make an adult decision as to what to do next. If you can make extra money by producing art or models, then more power to you! If that's just not in the cards, then you may need to find something else to help make ends meet. Do it now. Start this weekend. What else were you planning to do that is more important? Watch the teevee? Go drinking with your buddies? Be responsible and kind to yourself and your financial future! Let's face it, Windows 98 and ME are long in the tooth. They're poor memory handlers, and they're not designed to protect the OS and applications from errant or self-destructive applications. Windows 2000 is better, and Windows XP is even better yet, assuming that it is set up correctly. But life is full of harsh realities: These OSs require faster machines meeting the newest industry standards (ie; chipsets, memory, video, and disk I/O subsystem advancements) in order for the OSs to do their job. You'll only be disappointed if you try slapping Windows XP onto a Pentium 100 machine with 128 MB of RAM and a 20 GB hard drive. I hope I haven't irked too many people, especially as seeing how I'm a newbie here on R'osity. Good luck to those of you who need to upgrade your infrastructure.

If you have a computer that shipped with Win98, there is a good chance that it simply won't work that well with WinXP. These days you can find basic computers starting at around $400, and get pretty decent ones in the $600-$800 range. That includes a pretty fast processor, lots of RAM, and a big hard drive. Of course to get a killer machine will cost $1000-$3000, but even the $400 machine is light years ahead of what was shipping 5 years ago for many thousand. You can save money by not getting the very latest CPU. A year old CPU is very cost effective but still very fast. A Gig of RAM solves a lot of problems in modern software. Less will work, but RAM is probably the number one fix for problems. You probably can't buy a computer these days with less than a 20GB hard drive, and that's fine unless you gather every bit of free stuff from every site you ever go to. Too many people worry about getting the latest, fastest game graphics card, and end up killing their system. An older decent graphics card is typically more stable. It often takes graphics companies a year or more to get all the bugs out of their drivers. Some people get overclocked CPUs and think it's great because a game runs faster. But it can kill complex software since complex programs can cause an overclocked CPU to overheat and crash the software. Programs like Photoshop seem complex to end users, but they are quite simple programs compared to a 3D editor. A P5 scene with a few characters is more complex (software-wise) than a 10,000 pixel square image with 50 layers in Photoshop. BTW, I have an old 1Ghz PIII, 1 GB RAM on Win2k and run Photoshop CS, Lightwave 7, UVMapper, Netscape 7, and P5 at the same time for hours on end with no crashes. If I ran Word, Outlook, IE, or any IM type stuff at the same time it would crash constantly.

Geeze there's just no talking to some people. Facts and common sense seem to have no place as long as they can win their point. So I'm outta this thread after I make this point: To all others debating the OS problem...CL says Poser 5 will work with Win98. If it won't work with 98, then the responsibility lies with CL, not the user, to make it work. If they can't or won't make it work, they should recant their statements and issue refunds. No matter who says what about what, no matter what excuses or workarounds are offered, the fact remains that P5 still does not work as advertised on many systems that meet or exceed the system specs. I've said this before but here I go again: I like Poser. I want to see it succeed. But I don't think it can as long as CL keeps pumping out bad/OLD code and people just sit back and take it. And when someone does report problems, the flag-wavers blame them, call them names, and make excuses for the software. You don't get problems fixed by shooting the messengers. But you DO get fewer "complaints." People just stop posting about it. Big help that is.

The point is it DOES work with Win98. It just works a whole lot better on a newer, larger system.

"The point is it DOES work with Win98. It just works a whole lot better on a newer, larger system." -daverj Yup, I believe we have arrived at what is commonly called "the take home message." And here's another one: If you're still running anything with "Pentium III" (or lower) or "Windows 98" or "ME" or "NT" in the name, then you probably ought to start planning for (ie saving money for) a new system. Because if you don't, you'll eventually reach a point where new code no longer runs well (or fast enough) for you. If you don't believe me, then do a web search on Microsoft's new operating system, "Longhorn", which is now in development. There are a lot of changes on the horizon. It's best to be as informed and financially prepared as possible.

{To all others debating the OS problem...CL says Poser 5 will work with Win98. If it won't work with 98, then the responsibility lies with CL, not the user, to make it work. If they can't or won't make it work, they should recant their statements and issue refunds.} I totally agree with you on this point: if something is stated on the box, then it should work in the program. Unfortunately, years of reading game reviews have taught me that the "minimum system requirements" are just that: a minimum. Your system should actually be above their "recommended system requirements" to get the best performance. Anything less and you won't be happy. The question to ask is if Poser 5 really works on Windows 98 or is CL just included it as a way to placate Win98 users and not lose that market. I can image the outcry: What do you mean P5 won't work with my poor-memory-handling Windows 98? Geez, next you'll be telling us that I have to set my monitor to at least 1024x768! I love my 640x480 resolution. Don't make me change.

"Please, please tell me what the correct "configuration" is."

A computers configuration is the sum of hundreds of factors ranging from the hardware, to the drivers, to installed software and administration practices. Obviously it is impossible to completely and exhaustively give you a practical and complete idea of the "correct" configuration.

For my money? I would say it's a driver problem... but that's just intuition :)

"To all others debating the OS problem...CL says Poser 5 will work with Win98."

Poser5 does work with Win98 - as well as Win98 will ever work with high memory demand programs. However Win98 is a dramatically more fragile OS than Win2K and WinXP in every way. It is obvious and natural that Poser5 will have more problems with Win98 than Win2K and WinXP - as will all programs that have high demands on the system.

Personally? I hope CL (and everyone else) simply stop listing Win98 as a acceptable OS for software. it's dead, gone and buried... it is a waste of time and resources to support it.

Your simply NEVER going to be able to load as much stuff into Poser on a Win98 box as you will on WinXp box (assuming the system can run WinXP). It will never be as stable because the OS itself is dramatically less stable. When you couple that with the tendency for those running Win98 to be using obsolete hardware and it would take a miracle for CL to deliver the same experience as on a modern WinXP box.

SR4 has been released. OMG, Poser 5 is so fast now! :-D But I still wanna know how DrDavis managed to render 9 DAZ generation 3 figures in Firefly. I'm not sure I could do that with PP...