Quote -
The thing is that SM has a small profit motivation to get any figure into Poser by that same token, be it V4, or Alysson. SM doesn't make much money on figure sales, other than Content paradise which can be for V4, M4, Genesis or the toon watermelon figure. If it is Alysson or V4 it doesn't really increase SM bottom dollar that much.

 

No content, no users. 

If the content is lacking, then users will flock to where the better content lies. Note that this doesn't mean Genesis is necessarily better, but it does mean that with all the Vickie mojo apparently leaving Poser, where does that leave Poser? 

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Quote - 2.  Jessica & Apollo - that was then, this is now.  The state of the art has moved quite a bit from when I came in at the end of 2004.  Poser & DS users have options that simply were not available back then.

Yes and no. Some new options have come along, but not enough to set any app beyond the point of having the best content available. 

Quote - 3.  Clothing - Problem solved.

Sure - if you have Runtime folders weighing in at scores of gigabytes apiece. Now about them newbies...

 

Quote - As a Poser user, outsourcing what I view as core functionality to third parties is a reciepe for disaster. DS4 installs will be like snowflakes - everyone is different, based on what plugins are installed.

Only partially agreed on the first part of that (though I know enough that they retain full access and control of the source code). On the second part, there's no problem there, as plugins are just plugins. The plugins are maintained by the writers of those plugins, just like Wardrobe Wizard is maintained by PhilC, as an example.

Quote -  I don't see DS4 moving beyond the hobby market for the simple reason of no documentation.

Agreed, until the documentation shows up... then what? 

Quote - Who is the BBaggins of the DS4 community?  Who has the capabilities of making a completelly new figure that takes full advantage of the DS4 capabilities.

As for the first part, you may want to look a bit closer at the DAZ forums... there's hobbyist folks in there who are working up things like realtime collision detection, for heaven's sakes. As for the second? The figures are already there.