But what octane is giving unity and ue4 is a progressive renderer to replace lightmass to bake lightmaps. If you’ve used vray before they introduced their progressive renderer you’d know how big of a deal it was. I think it came with version 3.0. Corona is a progressive render too. Lightmaps generation with lightmass is too unpredictable and you cannot have a decent preview (for archviz, that means we won’t have to make 56 test bakes until we like what we see). Of course if you are making a game it’s not the same requirements. Octane is not going to be a new real-time renderer. It will be a new offline renderer within the game editor. It’s a new complimentary tool. It could’ve been just an offline renderer to make nicer stills, panos, etc. but on top of that it will be able to bake lightmaps.
Lightmass was intended for gaming and it’s enough for that purpose. But like it or not ue4 is starting to get traction in other industries and they have different needs 
It’s a matter of time until a better offline renderer/baking system will be implemented.
This is what progressive lightmap baking looks like, tell me it’s not better than lightmass where you can sit there for hours and have no clue what your shadows will look like once done :
This is from 2014.
***Read this post on reddit, Otoy confirm ue4 path tracer is in development. This is what it looks like. Instant High quality preview before baking high quality lightmaps.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/5au90v/otoys_jules_urbach_on_octanerender_unity/
