Great to hear there are more improvements planned! I did observe a noticeable increase in render times with this latest update. Obviously, going from like 30 seconds to 50 is nothing like the increase would be on a 15 minute rendering, but it does give me a slight concern that things like video rendering may end up taking quite a bit longer with these increases in render quality. My ask is if it's possible to add some finer control over render settings as these improvements come on line.
For example I just timed a 4k render of a kitchen interior with some stainless steel appliances and the render time was 78 seconds on Ultra. It was 55 seconds on High. I'll have to check what it was in 3.4 but I don't recall renders ever taking over a minute. I know people keep asking for that "give it everything you've got" quality settings, but I wouldn't want to mess up the current speed/quality tradeoffs that make Enscape such an incredible tool.
**EDIT: 11 seconds on "Ultra" in 3.4 -- This is going to be a serious issue if this is the direction render times are headed. **
It's definitely not our intend to go into that direction of just paying for increased quality with x-fold rendering times. Which is exactly why we've compromised on things like reflection quality before instead of "cranking everything up" to what's technically possible.
Keep in mind this is still a Preview release and thus a work in process. We'll make sure that rendering times will be comparable to prior releases even with the improved GI quality for the final release.