Quote - > Quote - As a version 1.0 product, this is farther along than reality was, and that means it will get better as time goes on.

Yes, but it's being promoted as a rival to Reality 2.5, not Reality 1.0 ...having a p1ss1ng contest is the wrong strategy; promoting it as an additional tool would be better all round.

No it hasn't been promoted as such, however people have made it seem like it.

Quote - We'll agree to disagree regarding DS Materials - yes Luxus is set up to convert them better by default, but is that REALLY getting the best out of Luxrender?

Both products does the same thing; convert DS materials to a luxrender equivalent. So how well that translation does is very important. If you don't have to convert everything, then that's a good thing and leaves you to try luxrender specific items... like using metals or glass.

Quote - I don't have an axe to grind either way, but my opinion as things currently stand without guesstimating future developments is that Luxus is a rival to 3Delight rendering rather than Luxrendering via the Reality plug-in.

If both products does the same thing and use the same engine, then both are rivals to 3Delight. I think that makes more sense and this type of argument was used in the early days of Reality as well, even when I couldn't do renders of some of the items I bought because they used both displacement and bump maps. That product progressed from there and I'm sure this will too. But I can easily see it as my main tool as I'm having a far easier workflow with its integration and conversion of materials.