Here's the first true area lights rendered image with octane.
lots more to do (efficiency wise), but 2.3 will make people very happy i think

The materials have an extra channel 'emission', that you can texture like any other channel, including procedurals, maps etc...
There is also news on the MLT front, but i will leave that until we've made more advancements, but things are looking very good.

Radiance
PS: approx 2 minutes on a GTX480