The denoiser does a great job....
But sometimes it denoises certain materials/objects too much. I am wondering whether artists could control this by communicating to octane not to denoise certain objects or materials.
A good example of excessive denoising are carpaint flakes. The denoiser makes the car paint look too smooth. Even at low samples the car paint looks better on the undenoised render.
I could render a non denoised and denoised pass and use a material matte to mask out the car paint in post. But it would be nice to be able to do this in render whilst working.
It is possible that with the next round of improvements to the denoiser it will be better equipped to handles this kind of scenario.