Quote - On the other had, the bit about switching from REYES (render everything you see, right?) to raytrace...that sounds ominous. Yet...what is the explanation of the current ability of FF to render raytrace and the existence of a nascent GI stub?

It probably does most everything in REYES but switches to raytrace for stuff that needs it. While this sounds cool in theory, it is actually very hard to optimize for both raytracing and REYES. So we have the painfully slow GI and raytracing and fast displacements. The opposite of what most poser scenes need.

Compare with mentalray's pure raytrace, which it uses it for everything from reflections to GI to shadows to SSS. But since it only deals with one kind of tech it can be tuned up the wazoo and is extremely fast at raytracing. Same with VRay, which is even more focused on GI and is therefore even better at it. But both are slower at displacements.