I spent three or so hours in the SSL offices playing with this desk. With the exception of a few features that weren't fully functional yet, this desk seems to me to be quite a competitor.
Any format of the desk is fully capable of running all 960 or so inputs. There is a number of full processing channels and a number of channels that you can mix but you do not have processing control of (eq/dyn/etc), I can't remember the exact numbers for those though.
The io system is connectable via bnc, proprietary optical (much like an ethercon is cased in xlr casing on the end) or Ethernet. And you can use ALL of those at once. The stage boxes themselves have 16 ins, and 16 outs, there are also aes boxes, and a few others, they slave to one another, or can be connected separately.
The console itself has a build like the vi6, solid aluminum frame, and a really solid case. It is available with a few different options, either three panels of faders, or two.
Usage, it's ridiculous how easy it is. Building fader layers is as simple as drag and drop, each fader tile (physical section) can do 5 layers and 5 banks in each layer, so 25 different fader pages per fader tile. I asked about having this be scene specific/recallable, that may be added in. So that's 3 tiles that are all able to show you 25 pages of 12 faders. Any of those pages can have ANY fader on them, input, masters, vca, groups, etc.
The multitouch screen is great. Sensitive, accurate, doesn't seem to mind dirty or sweaty fingers. If you're not so into multitouch, there is a small screen on the right that has dedicated controls for whatever the screen is showing Hpf lpf eq dynamics etc.
There is (like avid) a plugin grid, wherein you can load up pretty much any duende plugin including multiband compression, g comp, verbs, delays, etc. for output eqs, there are quite a few options. 10? Band parametric eq, 31 band graph, and then an interesting eq, that is most similar to a Lake's Mesa EQ. Any of the processes that take up a variable amount of processing, (like the Mesa-type eq) have a bar across the top that shows how much processing is used.
Random other little features that I like: main screen (much like Midas) that shows all inputs and outputs at once, faders can be colored (Midas), there is a button you can press so that THAT channel will light up on the stage box (Yamaha), sonically similar to a Digico (in my opinion).
The patching page, is something I haven't seen yet, it was still under construction. We had a conversation of something like avid's patch page (although I would like an option to maintain channel gain, or follow input patch gain, as opposed to just following the patch), thing is since the desk can do 960+ inputs, it's going to get a bit complicated. So possibly a page that looks like an input list, just to make sure that unlike Midas, there is a page where you can view every input or every output at once.
If you have any questions, maybe I have answers, I spent a lot of time asking a lot of questions and messing with mixing a show.