Quote -  I don't understand what you mean by missing out on materials and lighting effects.  Preview already shows approximate diffuse and specular values, with regard to scene lights. 

 

What that meant to me is that if one is using render settings so low that all it takes to render a frame is a few seconds, they're missing out on the potential image quality and appeal.

When I do some of my architetural viz animations, sure, I can turn the quality of the render down to render things at seconds per frame, but what I get is unacceptable presentation quality. For that target audience.

When I use more refined lighting and textures, the render time per frame is counted in minutes and tens of minutes or more (in othe older days), rather then seconds.

Quote -  I think most of the target audience doesn't know how to use bump maps properly and when they decided to make something and sell it, they don't use them or do them incorrectly.

 
Seems like it's not just the users, but a fair number of vendors too.
I can see it with displacement maps, you actually have to turn them ON in render settings (default render setting has them off)

It's possible I missed something, but I didn't see the way to globally turn bump maps off - short of disconnecting the material node or setting the dial to 0.  heh, well, that'll be a learning experience once the thing is out.

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