FPrime
 

I see Philip use FPrime during texturing the McLaren. Is it a "must" to have it or not? It is rather expensive.

Its not a must.. but its mighty helpful and if you ask me, worth every penny..

//Matt

Before gettign FPrime make sure you have lots of RAM. I think 1 Gig of RAM is the minimum requirement for it.

FPrime
 

I wonder will FPrime do "the same job" as VIPER during texturing?

FPrime will do a much better job than viper simply because it shows much more of the final scene than the viper window does. It also helps that with FPrime, you can zoom in to any part of your scene for really detailed closeups with no loss of quality (a real boon for those final surfacing and lighting tweaks). It's still no replacement for the occasional F9 test render, but you'll find yourself doing much less of them...