Highly doubt freestyle will be included, I believe there is still a fair amount of work to be done. I wonder if anything from gsoc actually make it in?
So what changes are we looking at in this new release?
-/ Physical Sky :yes:
-/ Colored shadows :o
-/ Ocean simulator :eek:
-/ Apricot goodness (too much to enumerate…) 
-/ What else??
The SoC projects are a bit unready I suppose, but maybe one or two might make it?
Where is the sound rework at now? We’ve been reading about 'just a few more weeks" forever now… (no criticism, just curiosity)
What’s the status on Pynodes? Texture nodes? FluidControl? Grease Pencil?
Of course we can just wait a measly 2 weeks and look at the change log…
Unless someone does anything drastic, Grease Pencil will certainly be in. 
In terms of GSoC projects, 2 are already in svn-trunk: Shrinkwrap, Text Editor
Apparently with the sound recode, it is still not functional (can’t actually play any sound).
Aligorith
Those are my tops - I hope they will be ready for inclusion.
Grease Pencil
Python Editor
Ocean SIm
Light Cuts
Not sure about LightCuts if wit will be done on time.
The volumetric system is getting a new recode now and we
will see that some time later down the road.
In real world terms it doesn’t matter at all. So long as there is a way that people know it is a different, most recent, stable version.
I think it is significant, however, from a marketing perspective. Granted Autodesk went to naming by year but XSI, C4D and Lightwave are still version number happy. A 3.0 release may make others notice and grab a little bit of mindshare. I think it is also significant as it is the first GUI refactor and any time you hear of people interested in Blender they almost always claim that the GUI is what puts them off. A big 3.0 launch would capture people’s attention, especially if they ever followed Blender and lost track of it.
With the number of features that are added every release (or every other) if Blender bumped version numbers like the others do they be at Blender 23 by now. It is kind of refreshing having devs and users who are not version number dependent and not dependent on SIGGRAPH for release announcements.
I hope they fix the particles. This is the weakest part of blender, compared to other 3D apps.
yep, as 2.46 was Blender bunny release, this is 2.48 YoFrankie! release!
that will be included in our DVD.
Maybe it doesn’t warrant a full numbered release. Maybe they have so much stuff planned for 3.00 that its too awesome for just a 2.5 release.
I agree that if coder were numbering Blender similar to commercial packages we already have Blender 33 But numbers really do not matter if you are not for marketing.
With all of the new greatness coming in. What is the current and svn builds speed like nowadays? Has it gotten slower? Of course I hope not. But that is always a bit of a concern when it comes to adding more and more
If you’re meaning performance issues I haven’t seen slowdowns, though the renderer can be slower because of more complex and realistic shading that can be done now for things like glass.
If the Blender foundation had an extensive marketing campaign like Autodesk and Luxology who knows how many users and would-be developers it would attract. For an app. with very little marketing done by the BF itself it has done quite well.
This I know. But I mean compared to same exact tasks and standard rendering without testing new stuff.
What I mean is that, if you tested side by side things in previous versions. … Ah nevermind. I’ll get back to it at some point this month or next.
i have been looking forward to 2.50 since 2.44 . i am interested to see how ton handles the multiple windows for those of us with 2 or more monitors.
2.5 won’t be long. 2.47 with peach, 2.48 with apricot a few months later, 2.49 after that and then it will be 2.5! wether the code is refactored or not. Or 2.49b 2.49c 2.49d…
Great news, every improvement and new GoS feature is welcome.
Since 2.5 will be a BIG step from everything i head, i wouldnt be suprised to see a 2.49a and 2.49b before 2.5
hehe, but that’s just my speculation.
I think 2.5 or 3.0 will be next year.
But still i think that blender.2.49 will be released before christmas …with smoke ?!
I agree with cekuhnen’s first comment.
I’m just glad to see Blender progress; version numbering and official build dates don’t matter to me.
3.0 would be a bad idea imo. 2.50 will come and a lot of people not in the loop necessarily will be like “UM WHERE ARE THE IMPROVEMENTS TO THE GUI”
Also 3.0 - 2.50 = .50 which means they’re allowed to delay “awesome blender” by another 50 releases 
I think the release logs should have nice video demonstrations of what the rewriting of the events system will allow in 2.50.
And a good reminder that Blender hasn’t switched to having the same UI as 3DS Max and Maya.