I just spent the last two weeks doing some deep programming with RTiPanel using the Denon, AD4 and Lutron drivers for feedback and event macros. I know this isn't new but it just happens to be my first time doing RTI 2-way/feedback and it's also a larger system.

All I can say is I'm really blown away by it, as much as I'm aware that Crestron and other high end control systems are capable of more. The ability to create my own logic and graphical interface is refreshing after messing around for a long time with System Builder. Integration Designer just seems so much more intuitive. I've been able to put together a very sophisticated system using text feedback, all kinds of variables and events triggered by variables and such...with only one quick call to tech support.

At the time of the technical support call, I wondered how I was to create a dimmer slider. Support guy said to just open the sample file for the Lutron driver and inspect the properties of buttons and sliders. Done, I was programming like an elite pro in ten minutes. How on earth do I display text and art from an iPod? Open up the sample and "bam!" I get it!

It did drive me crazy creating all kinds of pages and logic and variables for buttons. I started to see why someone would have wanted to create a wizard to create automatically populated pages but at the same time it feels good knowing exactly why the system behaves the way it does without having to contact a rocket scientist from tech support who has to fumble through his thoughts or log into my computer to figure out why I can't get something to work.

All I can say is thank you RTI. I've been waiting a long time for this. I hope my competition keeps messing around with bigger control systems they really can't figure out while I create awesomeness that they are completely clueless about.

RTI's ID is great. It's just missing a ton of things that can make integrators money. Like you mentioned, it took weeks to come up with something amazing. Even if you have now created a great template it will still take a week to program a fairly large system. At that point, I would rather be doing Crestron. I love Terry and the rest of the guys who are writing drivers but Terry's Virtual Matrix driver is something RTI should have came up with as a part of ID. And the fact that they still haven't is unbelievable. It's almost like a continous experiment with installers/companies going along for the ride. They always release s#$t that isn't well thought out and will modify it after a couple of years. They are heading in the right direction but they are getting lapped by the competition because they are out-gunned. But overall RTI is a decent choice for anyone looking for automation system.

PS, look at Terry Coupes VMS driver. It can be expensive if you are using a lot of 2-way remotes but it can really cut down on the pages. I went from 80-90 to 24 of the iPad. The only complaint is that the volume ramping isn't a smooth as it could be (Again, RTI really needs to step in to create their own driver version).

Besides the using the customer/installer as a beta tester and the "two weeks" mentality of RTI, I think the biggest problem is underestimating.
I am a fairly adept RTI programmer, albeit a bit rusty. But going from simple single room remotes and a house audio system to a 16 zone AD8, 6 video zone system with Ipads, 2 way, lighting, weather drivers etc should not be underestimated.
Wound up biting myself in the ass bigtime over a large RTI job. The level of detail required and the time involved goes up an order of magnitude when you get into larger systems. They are not crank it out in an afternoon type deals, yet some assume that since it is "only" RTI that it should be a quick, easy deal.

What are the benefits of Crestron or AMX level to RTI or Control 4 level?

Creation SystemBuilder can be done exactly the same way if you turn "build pages for me" off. Once you do that you manually create the interface and all programming. If you were doing Prodigy and using the Two Zone Volume Extender, then you never knew exactly what was taking place. By manually building your interface and your own global Presets or system macros, SB becomes very very similar to RTI.

With crestron you can do subpages and true variables, not just on/off flags. Maybe you can now with tie, I'm not sure. Being able to have 12 different states for a variable is great for tracking selected room and not worry about clearing flags every time.

You can sorta do this with Control4. It supports variables that are Boolean, Number, String, or Device. You can write a driver that spits out pretty much anything as a variable and then you can test against it in programming.

The 'flag' thing in RTI is pretty cumbersome, but if you stick with it you can do a LOT with 256 flags.

I do really like the capability / flexibility of RTI's ID.

I do wish they had variables. Flags get old pretty quick when you are tracking things and have to use lots of them just to track something such as what room the remote is currently in control of.

RTI has the ability to track variables on the equipment. It's just difficult for anything other than equipment like rooms and sources. There are 3rd party drivers that do this well but the volume implementation isn't great because of the ramping speed. RTI needs to come up with a solution for this. The other thing that sucks was we were having to use two different third party drivers just to implement source and zone control on the iPad. It had to do with one driver saving the flags on the processor and because the iPad doesn't store local flags we needed another driver to track within the iPad directly. PIA!