There're now Dave62, tungerz, mib2berlin and r0ug3r who are testing the plugin so I hope to quickly have enough feedback for stabilizing it.
As the workflow is quite different from previous versions regarding material handling, it will also require I write some documentation in order to avoid flooding on the forum. Note that the benefit for this new plugin is mainly for animations. As already discussed on the forum, there's no point setting up every material in blender while a key feature of Octane is to allow real-time editing of them, but I consider it's a must-have when dealing with animations...
I hope being able to release it this week and that the early testers will be able to assist users as I'll be in Croatia all next week with little time for monitoring the forum. Also note that the constraint of using a very recent svn build may discourage some people. I recommend they stick to 2.56a and the old plugin until Blender goes final.
Anyway, you can start imagine what you will do with it
Cheers,
Yoyoz
[EDIT] : added some screenshot of the new panels.