Quote - A problem with a stictly based GPU renderor like Octane is it does not support displacement maps because NVIDIA does not yet. That is the reason that true professionals shy away from it. Displacement maps are key to a professional workflow.

This isn't entirely accurate information.  First, Octane is not being shyed away from by professionals.  Octane is being looked at very closely by professionals, and Otoy has partnered with Autodesk, and many big names in the industry, who have a close eye on the development.  There's many professionals waiting to use Octane in their pipelines (just read their forums) but have to wait.  It's not because of the lack of displacement mapping either.  Otoy has stated the software is not ready for production YET, and recommend it not be employed in a studio workflow at this time.  This is really why it's not been used yet in pro pipelines.  It can do Normal mapping, which is used more in professional gaming studios for real time dev than displacement mapping, so that's not the reason.  The reason is maturity.  It's not ready yet, but it soon will be.  For reference, Vray, which is now the most highly regarded and utilized professional rendering engine, was not used widely in production houses until well into it's first major point release, so this isn't uncommon.

Otoy is working on preparing Octane for studio pipelines.  They are working on cloud streaming technology, and network rendering on a cluster.  Given their public partnerships with major software companies, there's going to be a lot of studios interested in this when it's ready.

Also, modern GPU are already capable of getting displacement mapping using the geometry shaders for auto tessellation, but the industry is still developing games for the Xbox360/PS3. So perhaps the next gen consoles, like Xbox One and PS4 will most likely introduce the use of displacement mapping to the average games.  This will also probably be introduced to Octane in the future, but that's not the most important thing right now.

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