Blender LTS exists…
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Which in turn gives the BF a bit of room to implement experimental yet badly needed functionality for the releases in between. Otherwise, you end up waiting a while for features that might get pulled because it is not completely stable.
How? https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rrLBG
I found it similar like in many other software like Maya.
I disagree. Even Blender old fluid simulator worked on 10m domain. Running simulation at double speed it was able to simulate fluid movement (flow) at 40m scale. At 512x resolution, voxel size was coarse so it required to use particles in splahes.
Also it was possible to use it together with dynamic paint to get larger scale two dimensional simulation.
Mantaflow made it even better.
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Agreed. @Midphase I gather you never tried Cinema4D, LightWave, or Modo? Physics, particles, etc. are arguably in a worse or similar state. Or require deep pockets for additional plugins.
As always, curb you expectations. If your job requires more, invest in Houdini, for example, and use that as a combo with Blender. I do.
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I come from Houdini. Blender is still not even swimming in the same pool.
That look realistic to you?!? 
Mantaflow still needs work though. Unfortunately, the dev. who was in charge of it is not on a paid contract with the BF at the moment and finding people who can work with such code is not easy.
The BF has seen a massive increase in revenue but sourcing the right people who can work wonders with the code in certain areas has not gotten any easier. That is why we who use Cycles should be fortunate that Lukas Stockner decided to sign on as the new engineer,
Houdini is obviously far ahead just from the fact they have an entire team well versed in simulation tech, I do not think Herbert meant to compare Blender with them specifically (but rather compare it to more generalized DCC solutions).
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…nor are most other DCCs! 
Which is why I enjoy using both for their respective strengths.
There was not much of difference to Arnold, so it depends on scene. You can make scene as realistic you want in Cycles, like in Arnold. Please note also that images behind link were rendered using low samples.
V-Ray is different thing, it is biased renderer unlike Arnold and Cycles: https://irendering.net/biased-and-unbiased-rendering-algorithms-which-is-better/
I wonder why we’re even arguing about stuff? The OP asked a question, and we’re all chiming in with our opinions. You’re not going to change my mind on Cycles simply not being as good as other renderers – to me it just isn’t. I have no idea if it’s because of the Principled Shader, or some other thingamabobby happening behind the scenes. It doesn’t matter, the bottom line is that I have yet to see something from Cycles that I think is at the same level of realism as other renderers including Arnold, Renderman, VRay, Octane and Mantra.
Speaking of which… do you happen to have a link to some instructions on how to use it with Blender? What you are writing reads interesting. I have never looked into it so far, but I am really interested to see how to use a different pbr pipeline.
How to use what? Another render engine in Blender?
“I have no idea” is not good argument. You need to know your tools. I just show scene, raw render both Arnold and Cycles and there was no major difference. In production it is just tuning samples and adjusting tone map.
In my understanding the real differences between Arnold and Cycles are how complex scene renderer can handle. Cycles is faster than Arnold in simple scenes but very complex scenes there may be speedup in Arnold. However, I can’t verify this myself as I’ve not seen how Arnold behaves on compex rendering.
Both are using same math and algorithms from 80’s so there are no major differences how it looks.
Then make it and prove that there is something missing.
I can show tests to proof my point. Here is one very old test: https://www.blenderguru.com/articles/render-engine-comparison-cycles-vs-giants
Quality in cycles is clearly more realistic than in Octane, Mitsuba or V-Ray seven years ago. But I don’t consider this to good measure. Seven years is long time.
This is newer: Redshift, Renderman and Cycles: https://youtu.be/6v7ZuFXPPQg?t=1248
…and the results are similar. And Cycles is here like Arnold. It is unbiased while Redshift and Renderman are biased.
So unidirectional, unbiased path tracers like Arnold and Cycles give equally realistic quality, just give time and enough samples for image to converge how materials and lights are specified. To improve that you need shoot rays from light source too to get something more for caustics, or use spectral rendering to calculate how light behaves on different wavelengths.
To improve image quality from Cycles is not to use Arnold, Renderman or Redshift. It should be then something that shoots rays from light source and do spectral rendering.
However, speed improvements between renderers may be noticeable and quality between renderers in limited time may increase quality. So if you have budget to have 5min per layer time to render, different renderers may allow noticeable quality difference. There are people who like V-Ray and Octane for this reason. Arnold vs Cycles is easily same thing but it may require very complex scene.
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Do not forget the effect Hollywood had on what people perceive as ‘cinematic realism’ (which is an image in full ACES transform with teal or orange color grading). Troy_S has repeatedly mentioned the basic logical and quality issues with the transform, yet professionals insist that render engines need to have it as the core of their color functionality to be seen as any good.
I mention again as well, the widespread use of the Principled Shader does have an impact, because the priority was not hyper-realistic imagery, but the ability of the artist to direct the look of the scene. Now it works well for the purpose of cartoons and NPR, but people who want to push realism really need to use the individual building blocks (as they have things Principled does not have like oren-nayer shading for rough materials and guaranteed energy conservation).
I can agree with ACES transform, I do it myself and Cycles is agnostic about color system except sky shaders and wavelength converter bundled in Cycles are not but that doesn’t matter. Blender can be configured to work in ACEScg, render skies and use HDRI in ACEScg, use ACEScg space in lightsources and materials, and use more accurate color reproduction. Also it is ACEScg that works, full ACES is not designed to light calculations.
Comparing Arnold and Cycles should of course be done using same post processing and same color spaces. Denoising should be also disabled. Otherwise we are not comparing rendering engine. Color grading and tone mapping is not anyway part of how rendering works. Those are post processing.
As far as I know, there are more shaders in Arnold but this may also mean that we are comparing some shader. Basic things can work similarly but if workflow is more like using building blocks, those are easily tuned to renderer and may also lead result where there are distinct look in different renderers and heavily tuned scene may totally break when changing rendering engine, and require tuning it again.
BF is revising PS for more realism. Remains to be seen
I still don’t understand why you’re trying to change my mind on this. I think that Cycles looks like crap compared to the results from other render engines.
Just to be clear, I’m not talking about my own results, I’m talking about ANYTHING that I have ever seen anyone ever post around here. Are you saying they all don’t know how to use it?
Also, you keep saying “there are no major differences.” I’m not talking about major differences, I’m talking about the super subtle, nuanced, barely perceptible stuff that adds up in the end to make something that it’s truly exceptional.
But I get that it’s subjective, and a personal preference just like camera sensors. So especially because of that, I have no idea why you’re insisting to try and change my mind.
Not everyone on this forum guns for maximum realism in their work, it should also be noted that Cycles is one of the few pieces of decent rendering tech. that is actually accessible to hobbyists and to the young due to the price (so they do not have years or decades of skill and/or practice that leads to noticing the small things). Then there’s the fact that many commercial engines provide post-processing filters that can be applied at rendertime, the way you are expected to work in Blender is to add them in the built-in compositor.
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Lol… I bet you can’t stand watching 99 percent of Netflix/ Amazon with that cork sniffing not good enough attitude!
On topic. Blender is just software… it’s damn good at a lot of stuff. I used to use substance a lot but since I’ve gone back to freelance find quixel good enough for most things…. Once you work out your baking pipeline. Wish quixel competed with substance/marmoset there
Next is unreal… especially v5. Lumen is a real-time joy and nanite is rumoured to have many more use cases soon (transparency/foliage). The new render manager means you can lose the temporal anti aliasing artefacts look and get buttery smooth dof and motion blur with the right settings.
I combine all of this with da Vinci resolve/fusion. The post processing/colour tools are awesome especially in the studio version which is cheap enough in the scheme of things. I used to use after effects a lot but blender and da vinci scratch that itch and are actually less complicated when setups get complicated if you know what I mean. Yes after effects wins for the simple stuff but the inception like comps within comps within comps is old fashioned and clunky…
What a time to be alive though…. Blender/da Vinci/quixel/unreal… all free and super empowering.
Until all creativity is replaced by ai and we all die of climate change poverty and starvation.
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Two points for you to ponder:
– 99% of Netflix/Amazon doesn’t use Cycles
– What you call a “cork sniffing attitude” is what you need to get past if you ever want to be hired by any VFX studio. Hate to break it to you but us cork-sniffers are what makes up the majority of VFX employers in this industry.