Oh, really? So on July 26th, in this thread, you didn't quote a post from the forums over at RDNA in which it was explicitly stated " Of course there will be advanced settings that need some time to learn but you will be able to lean those as you go." but which you proceeded to ignore while complaining that there would be no advanced settings?

Odd, because I certainly responded to that post by pointing out your own post demonstrated your complaint had some issues.

If you had the faintest idea of what you are talking about, which you definitely don't, you would know that the late Nerd3D was talking about the parametrization of the Cycles engine, not of the structure of shaders. Keith, go to Blenderartits and read carefully the 755 page thread about Cycles, get Blender, go thru a couple of hundreds of tutorials ranging from a trivial matte material to volumetric fogs and clouds and then, only then, come back to discuss about Cycles because then, only then, you will know it enough to have an opinion about what Cycles is and is not, about what Cycles does and does not.

Signed: somebody who started using Cycles the next day after the nightly build included it for the first time, i.e. about 4 years ago.

As far as I can tell, having read that same post, he said nothing of the sort. He didn't say anything to come to any sort of final conclusion about what or might not be incorporated in the final version. You made assumptions about what he meant, didn't seek any clarification of what he meant, and then proceeded to complain about what you interpreted he meant while assuming that of course you had to be correct. Just as you don't have the faintest idea what I may or may not know about Blender, what I may or may not have read about it, whether I may or may not use Blender and Cycles. You just assume that because I don't complain about Poser incessantly, as you do, that there's no possible way I can know anything about it.

I will admit I'm not up on the latest changes in Blender and Cycles since the last version I have is 2.69 since I prefer modelling in modo, and that release is almost two years old now so i haven't bothered upgrading. Just out of curiosity I should look in my archive and see...why look at that. My original download of 2.41. Why, that can't be right. That came out in 2006! That would mean I've had Blender for...carry the one...9 years now. Peculiar.

But you've been using Cycles for a whole four years! How could you possibly be wrong? Clearly something else must be at fault. Perhaps a timewarp? You just can't trust those singularities.