Quote - I am so glad I asked.
That functionality sounds really fun to play with. And I'm all for saving on the "clicking"!

Would this New Material Room be able to rock (the current) Firefly or would a plug-in (ala the LuxRender thread) to an external renderer or exporter to Bryce/Vue/etc be preferred as per the OP's original question. Would you want a Firefly II (of Firefly plus) to leverage this dream Material Room?

Much of what I described (Texture Map nodes, Composite Nodes, groups, etc.), would require no changes to the renderer. They are changes to the shader data model and UI, but they translate into directly into the existing non-composite shader model.  That's how I introduced composite nodes into my previous company's product. It started with a flat node diagram with no structure. Adding the composites required no changes to the back-end.

The net effect is the same.  I had hoped to build all that into matmatic (with a GUI) by now, but I'm too busy with work.

Some of the others, like the model space coordinates, would not be so minor. Refract2 is minor - the math is a straightforward variation on what is already there. Stefan knows better what is easy versus what is hard.

Firefly is capable of quite a few more add-ons, but will never perform super fast unless we give up the total freedom we have with the lighting nodes. Instead, there has to be a commitment to realism, and only use shader models that do not violate the laws of physics. Which is what LuxRender is trying to do. It will not offer impossible materials. But it does have some ability to create procedural patterns. Lux needs a lot more of those types of things - procedural pattern generation to affect specularity, diffuse color, etc.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)