I was looking at some more blender stuff... and I really hope they will come up with LGPL C++ API, so we can join in ;)
So is your code or approach different than that of Vray, as I understand there is a Vray version for Blender?
The sad fact is that I'm not particularly interested in learning Blender or jump ship from Max if I don't have to, and it would seem logical that Max sooner or later also will have a PBR viewport. Unfortunately I guess in the case of Autodesk it will mean later. :(
Oh man, this is so much more than just having a pbr viewport.
I was using blender for a longer time, but last 3 months almost exclusively (aside some rendering) and while I had to adopt some concepts that seemed weird at first I gotta say it's incredible. I really can't believe what these guys done with this software in past few years. For me, the only thing missing is corona.
But cycles is progressing too (principled shader, cpu+gpu rendering, denoising, filmic color management...)
The 2.8 pbr viewport is to be fully compatible with cycles, same shaders. So you setup everything realtime and then just switch to rendering having the same shaders, no preview needed to check for materials. 2.8 is also to have lot's of workflow changes on how scene is organized etc... And in some video there was even talk that aside making a new game engine that uses eevee rendering they want to build some simplified tools that allows to build interactive scenes.
If you look at how much progress max goes through in a year or two and then compare to blender it's ridiculous. Not mentioning that there are addons for almost anything you want, and even whole customized branches of blender. Whenever I have to open max these days it feels like going 10 years back, slow and full of bs.
Sad thing is, I don't think blender will change it's licensing. I think, it's been working for them so far so I guess, why change?