Good point. I just don't see how you pass someone when they have such a massive head start.
Well in the case of Max3D, they don't really have that massive a head start as far as I can tell. Also remember that Max3D is being written by one guy, with a pretty clear sense of direction, where-as many of the other engines have different authors with different philosophies, all pulling it in different directions. Last but not least, Mark is on his engine as a full-time professional. Just looking at the number of features that these engines already support is mind boggling.
But is that nessecarilly an advantage? I mean unless you're Red Ocktober and want to make shiny submarine simulators (no offense), there's only likely to be a handful of features that you really need, and from what I can tell from Marks shader worklog, getting a lot of these features is simply going to be a case of mixing and matching suitable shader parameters.Now if Mark can really pull of this feat, and present it in a userfriendly manner, I think Max3D is going to increase the ammount of power a mathematically challenged person, is able to coerce out of 3D hardware, by at least an order of magnitude.
Still if you abosolutely must have a 3D solution now, it's not going to make a lick of difference whether Max3D is the second comming, because it isn't out yet, and pretty likely you'll be able to finish a game using one of the other engines (ColdSteel / Aurora) offered in the mean time.