Sorry if I'm asking but on discord servers I see more and more references to Unity, and their last tech demo is simply amazing.
So... I wonder what the future of my beloved program (Poser) might look like when I see what "they" can do with that environment? engine?

@Y-Phil Your link leads back to this page, so you need to fix the link to the tech demo.

Sorry about that, here is the right link.

That's quite a good video.  I take Blender classes at Udemy, and they have a lot of gaming classes for Unity and Unreal, and they seem very popular, but even though gaming is a very popular outlet, not everyone wants to do gaming.  I certainly never considered it, so I'm not so worried about Poser.

Besides, I'm sure there are those who can do animation with Poser, and other non-gaming 3D software, in their workflow.  I know Blender is used a lot for creating really good short films.

That makes sense, thank you so much @MissB

I don't think Poser users should be worried about Unity, it's focused on a different audience. Game engines are made for interactive experiences, besides that still today average computers are not good enough to handle top quality results at runtime. If you talk about price, that "free" thing is a trap, as with others if you enjoy some success you will be paying anyway. And that can also change with one click if they decide to update the EULA. I have visited some Unity forums in the past, there is a lot of people worried actually, that thing appears to be in eternal demo mode, too many promises, years passing, and a ton of features get left behind.

Unity have a marketplace too, but many products struggle to keep long term compatibility due to the fast/always changing approach on development. Poser devs on the other hand, don't having to constantly be able to deliver for multiple systems (games go to consoles, mobile, pc, etc...) can focus on a more polished app for the users.

Poser has a lot of things ready to use. I think its really powerful for good stills and short animations, marketplace products don't struggle so much to keep compatibility thanks to some good file standards.

I'm currently interested in learning more about the Cycles Surface Node, and found it really amazing. What is seems to me is that there are not yet too many people exploring its full potential, as we all know the Posers user base is small compared to others, so that's expected.

To wrap up, as with anything, there are usually a lot of ways and tools to achieve your vision, but don't be trapped into thinking that the neighbours grass is greener, that is not always the case, every choice will have its ups and downs.

Thank you so much, @evargas, for your explanations

Tangential, I'm concerned that Poser developments are making it harder to start using Poser. Having to jump straight into Cycles, nodes etc ...

In my experience, starting with new technology (in this case nodes) is easier than switching from older. Many times older tech has limitations that require a myriad of hoops to get around or fake results. People who have gotten used to that now have to get used to not using the hoops and doing it directly. I think it was the poser render engine that needed sphere maps to fake reflections. In firefly you could have real reflections with a few nodes, but people still want to add maps. In cycles, it’s one node. 

Plus, firefly is still around, and Here Nerd states that it isn’t going anywhere any time soon. So if users find that way better, they can do it.

Switching from Firefly to Superfly takes some relearning and that has a cost, but Cycles makes more inherent sense than the PoserSurface node with its many alternate versions of things, and PhysicalSurface is super easy. I am already much, much better in Cycles than I ever was with PoserSurface. Plus, Cycles is also used in Blender, so that's a big leg up for new users who have played with Blender before (and it also means there is a lot more useful info if you need to go searching the web to figure out how to do something).

To me, the real issue is just the lack of Cycles preview, so I am hoping for improvements there.

CyclesX is out for Blender now and supports M1 processor on the Mac.  The Poser dev team has been steadily updating plumbing (libraries, etc) to be well-positioned to take advantage of this as well as incorporating other cross-platform libraries like bgfx for hardware-accelerated post fx.

Thanks for the update Tim.  As a long time Blender user, I'm glad Poser's Superfly is getting more of the advantages of the Cycles render engine

I, myself, haven't started using Blender 3 with CyclesX, as I'm still trying to learn the Blender 2.93 UI, but I've always wanted to use some of the nodes in Blender in Poser's Supefly, but up until now it's been hard to duplicate the setups, so I'm really glad to hear we may get there eventually with Poser. 

Thank you so much, Tim!