Hi, sorry if this has been posted before but I did a search and the last message I got back was over a year ago! I currently have PP running on a P4 2.8Ghz, WinXP, 1Gig ram. I've had P5 since the install but always heard that it wasn't so great, I remember when I used it on my old machine some of the renders were horrible compared to PP. I know that P5 is up to SR4 now and am wondering if it's worth me installing it onto my newer system... For 1 thing, the library management will be a huge improvement! So there it is... Probably an age old question, but which is better PP or P5? Thanks, Fang.

You'll get different opinions from everyone, I suspect, but since SR4.1 came out a lot more folks seem to be pleased with P5. I certainly wouldn't go back to P4/PP if you paid me. The material room alone is worth the operating overheads. Your system specs should give you plenty of play. Regarding render quality, I find it superior to P4 as long as you play with the render settings depending on what you've got in the picture. Stewer has a great section on Firefly renders and Ynsaen posted some good tips at the RDNA forums, too.

I think it depends more on what you want to do with Poser - if Poser is your primary app (or with Vue), then get P5. But if you use Poser for export to other apps I'd stay with P4PP, not becuase P4PP is better but because P5 doesn't add anything for use with other apps (except for fixing the #ind .OBJ export bug). Best; Dan

dan: It does add - multiple runtimes are great even if you don't render in P5, and dynamic clothing does export just fine as OBJ.

You can install both and operate them in parallel, you know... ;) P5 doesn't overwrite earlier versions. I've got P4 and P5 side by side while I learn the features of the latter and attempt to wean myself off the former. I've attached my Poser 4 runtime to Poser 5 to save reinstalling everything.

Yeah, I had both installed on my old system. PP tended to get forgotten about tho until I bought a new PC. Poser is my primary app. I haven't had much probs with PP until recently (virtual memory too low on big renders) I believe there is a CL patch for users with over 1gig memory. So to be honest, I really don't know what to do. Is P5 worth the hastle of having to install it and re-arrange my libraries? I admit, I'd like to do a few reflective style images which only P5 will allow to do properly... With SP4 does P5 run fast and smoothly or are there times (such as rendering) that will be MUCH slower to PP? Thanks again, Fang.

To be able to do true reflections, you'll need to use the FireFly ray tracer, which will be slower. Horses for courses - there isn't a single answer to this question. I believe that P4 will be on my machine for a long time to come, because I know it well, and it's easier to bash something out quickly. For the more considered projects, P5 will come to the fore.