I just read an article about H&M's use of virtual models on their web site.
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/cl ... 26573.html

They are very photorealistic. Other than the fact they share much of the same body there is little to indicate they are not real women.
Below is a link to the lingerie section of the web site.
http://www.hm.com/us/subdepartment/LADIES?Nr=4294962375

Impressive, but at the same time you should realize that these are not 100% rendered. The hair for example is definitely either taken from real photos or hand drawn by an artist. The way they explain it in the article seems to me more like a green-screen technique, so basically they can photoshop whatever they want on the renderings, since the clothing is just pasted on top.
That, of course, is not to say it isn't clever or anything, but something to keep in mind if you want to compare this to renderings that come straight out of Poser/Daz without any postprocessing.

Yeah, I'd be more impressed if they had a technique for converting images of the clothes they sell to Poser/Daz format and were able to emulate them on a variety of 3D female forms so that prospective purchasers could get an idea of what they might look like in them. Then they could sell the 3D clothes to Daz/Poser aficionados as well!

I don't know what to think of this. It looks to me like they took one skinny model and photoshopped the heads of other models onto her body. This part rings untrue to my ears:

"It is regrettable if we have led anyone to believe that the virtual mannequins should be real bodies. This is incorrect and has never been our intention. We will continue to discuss internally how we can be clearer about this in the information towards our customers."

If they actually want to be clear that they're using mannequins, why don't they ... use mannequins? Department store mannequins have perfect figures too but no one ever mistakes them for real people.

Greebo, I like your suggestion. Daz4 has a technology to autofit clothes to the Genesis body regardless of how you morph the body. You can dress a child type in armor, morph it into a gorilla, and have the armor follow the morphs. Imagine if the site let you enter your dimensions and the models all switched to look like you. Then you'd have some idea how the clothes would look on you, rather than the model with the body of a 12 year old girl they used.

I wonder if that would cause them to sell more or less clothing.

Tlaero