Dazzab,
I realize I'm the FNG in this forum and you don't know me from Adam but I feel a need to say something here. You brought up some pretty good complaints in your last but you may not realize you hammered down some strong positives as well. First, I work and have worked for a long time for the UAV arm of a major aerospace outfit. We have more logged mission flight hours than any of the competition. let's hope that suggests I at least somewhat understand autonomous flight systems.
Without going into specifics I'll venture our lowest end autopilot runs close to $70,000.00 and once in awhile it still has a hiccup. The closest aerospace grade autopilot I know of that would work for a multirotor runs upwards of $15,000.00 - $20,000.00 and troubleshooting with the maker involved will cost you in the area of $250.00/hour. So price wise the Pixhawk comes in pretty good and topping that it has more safety features than the ones I work with every day. Based upon actual flight experience with the Pixhawk and our AP I believe the Pixhawk is spatially more accurate in all but one flight mode than ours. Where software is concerned the Pixhawk is far less complex.
You mentioned you made calls to 3dR and was mistreated. I know how you feel because I had some issues along similar lines with them not that long ago. But they made some personnel and evidently some policy changes at the same time. Now they respond with alacrity and courtesy and that's the best I can hope for with anyone. Call the "industry leader" making "professional grade" FC's (DJI) sometime and see what kind of a response you get. Also take the time to read their warranty policy all the way through.
Next you mentioned you discovered an issue that got their attention quickly, which 3dR near immediately passed on to their other users in order to prevent crashes. Try that with the industry leader, maker of professional grade FC's DJI and see how fast they act on the information. You say Pixhawk is not ready for prime time but my experience with the most expensive "professional grade" multirotor FC made by a hobby vendor indicated their $1,000.00 lump of electronics is a P.O.S. and seriously ripping off consumers
The point to the above being that 3d Robotics did something after you had issues while the other maker(s) typically and habitually avoids any involvement or responsibility when their stuff takes a dump. Their policy is to never, ever admit to knowledge of any defect issue with their products and to let the users sort out final development via consumer beta testing. That's a standard part of the Chinese hobby industry business model btw, and something I've repeatedly experienced with numerous vendors from that area for the past 20 years. Deny, deny, deny. At least 3dR lets people know a software revision might be beta and permits them the choice to upload or not. DJI just dumps upgrades out there hoping for the best, and recently issued another upgrade after one released less than a week previous to cover up some mistakes. That was for the exalted A2 btw, the so called creme de' la creme...
I'm truly saddened to learn you had issues and those issues cost you time and money but from where I'm sitting it looks like 3d Robotics is about the only maker of FC's out there that responds in any way to reported customer issues. At least you can call them on the phone and obtain responses to e-mails. IMO, not one of the FC's that are currently on the market meets the level of redundancy and reliability that is necessary for commercial ops in civil airspace, but from what I've seen so far Pixhawk is the closet to that level that is also affordable. Could it be better and easier to use? You bet but until something that is actually better comes along I have to go with it.
Thanks for listening.