I was fortunate enough to get a chance to play with the new Poser Pro version 7 recently, thought I'd give everyone a quick overview of what I found.  Please note that this information is meant for people who actually use and like Poser.  If your one of those "I prefer my $12,000 program because blah blah blah" kinda folks, please don't bother to respond. 

First impression was pretty good.  They didn't seem to change much of the interface from Poser 7, which was quite nice actually.  There  are a few additional menu items here and there, but all of the old stuff is still in the same place, so workflow is pretty much unaffected.  I must give the programmers over at Smith Micro credit there, they didn't start making changes to the interface just to be making changes to the interface.

New content - the CD itself doesn't seem to install any other than one new male figure, which is nothing to write home about. I would imagine there might be some available for download but since this install was on a business PC owned by someone else I didn't exactly feel right about downloading a ton of stuff, so sadly I can't report much on new content in Pro.

64 bit functionality.. well, gotta read the fine print here folks.  Smith Micro delievered exactly and only what was promised, a 64 bit upgrade to the rendering engine.  Firefly is now 64 bit, which does help speed up the rendering process somewhat, but it appears that Poser Pro itself, the main program, is still a 32 bit application, so all in all your not looking at huge performance boosts over the original Poser 7.

Network Rendering.  Ok, this is uber geeky cool, no doubt about it.  You can send your render over the network to machines that have the queue manage installed on them and let them render for you.  I can see where this would be very, very useful if you had a cluster of machines or at least one big fast server system on your network to allow it to do all the heavy lifting, so you could render in background while still working in Poser in the foreground.  That having been said, I'd say odds are pretty good that most other home users are in the same boat I am, I only have one machine at home capable of really running poser much less rendering a big scene, so for me at least network rendering just isn't a huge selling point.  Cool, yes.  Useful for my setup at home?  Not really.- at least not anytime in the near future.  I'll have to plunk down a lot of cash on some more hardware before network rendering will really be worth having.

Render Quality - A slight improvement here, with emphasis on the word slight.  All in all the new rendering engine does appear to be more stable and faster if run on a 64 bit machine, but all in all not huge, can't live without kind of  improvement here. 

So the verdict?  Well, at $200 for the upgrade package I'm afraid Smith Micro has gotten themselves a no sale from me at least.  Granted, I'd like to have the 64 bit render engine, but it really isn't such a huge improvement that it's worth that kind of price tag.  I payed less for my full version of Poser 7 than I would for the upgrade package, which seems a bit silly to me. 

I'm left with the impression that Smith Micro really doesn't understand the 3d market in general, much less the market for the Poser program.  While they did make a few nice upgrades to Poser 7 with Poser Pro, it's hardly worth more for an upgrade than it was to buy the original program, and Poser Pro is certainly not worth $500 by any stretch of the imagination.

For that kind of money you could buy some pretty serious 3d apps, ones who's capabilities far outstripe Poser Pro.   No, I'm afraid that Smith Micro has priced themselves right out of Poser's market.  One can only hope that they soon begin to realize their mistake.

The only other real "feature" that Poser Pro offers that the original Poser 7 didn't was the ability to interface with programs like 3ds Max, Maya and Cinema 4d with ease.  However, I can't imagine too many people using 3ds Max who are going to look at spending $500 on Poser Pro - same with most of the folks that own Maya or Cinema 4d.  These programs already have far more capabilities than Poser Pro, and while integration is nice it's hardly worth that kind of cash outlay unless you have a pretty significant need for Poser in addition to 3ds max.  I can't see this being a huge market by any means.

So I for one will pass on the upgrade, at least for now.  Until they cut that upgrade price at least in half I wouldn't even consider it, I'll stick with good old Poser 7 for now.  Poser Pro does have a few nice features, but it is certainly not worth $200 for an upgrade when I paid less than $150 for the original program I'm upgrading, and there are most definately not $200 worth of additional features in Pro.

So I'm afraid Smith Micro will probably be in for a rude awakening, I can't see a lot of Poser 7 owners upgrading, at least not for the time being.  What worries me is that they won't realize there mistake and readjust there pricing soon enough, with Daz Studio already making in roads into the Poser market place every day they leave those outlandish price tags on Poser Pro is another day they'll be losing market share.

Naturally your mileage may vary, but I for one won't be upgrading soon, not at those prices.

-Never fear, RenderDog is near!  Oh wait, is that a chew toy?  Yup. ok, nevermind.. go back to fearing...