I finally got around to downloading a beta (3.7b24, Windows version).
First time I tried it, so just my stupid-average-user observations here.
Not complaining about anything, it's working fine and looks stable ;)

o It would be nice if the download ZIP contained a short README
   listing some "major new features" as compared to 3.6.x (it is easy
   to overlook them in the multitude of praiseworthy bug fixes), and
   a quick note about how to best use the files in the beta ZIP to
   get a runnable 3.7b without destroying the existing 3.6.x (what
   I did was to create a copy of bin as "bin37b" and dump the
   contents of the ZIP file in there).

o On my P4/2.6Ghz with XP, rendering some random scenes seemed to
   take at least 2 times longer than with 3.6.1. After setting the
   thread count from default value of 2 to 1, this improved but still
   took at least 1.4 times longer than with 3.6.1 (even with sse2).

   Actually I wonder if the default thread count shouldn't be 1,
   to make the default behavior mostly like 3.6.x. Many people will
   not yet have a dual-core at home, and even those who do might be
   used to having the system operational while rendering in the
   background. Or maybe default thread count = 0, interpreted
   as automatic: thread count = number of cpus reported by OS?

   Furthermore, I think the thread count in the Windows GUI
   should persist.

o I noticed 3.7 now has support for HDR's but not the map_type 7
   which is implemented in Mega-POV to support the omnidirectional
   images which seem to be a typical use case for HDR's. Moreover,
   there is no syntax error when using an unsupported map_type,
   the image_map seems to silently revert to map_type 0.

o I know about the #version directive, but is there some built-in
   define to test the engine version using #ifdef, e.g., how could
   you create a HDR scene which renders both in MegaPOV and 3.7?

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