A streamlined alternative to the Daylight System, the new Sun Positioner and Physical Sky provides a coordinated workflow for users of modern physically-based renderers.
The primary advantage to the Sun Positioner and Physical Sky is the efficient and intuitive workflow compared to the legacy sunlight and daylight systems. The legacy systems consist of 5 separate plug-ins: the compass rose, the sun object, the sky object, the daylight controller, and the environment map. These are found in different locations in the interface; for example, the Daylight system is found in the Systems panel while its data location settings are found in the Motion panel.
This Sun Positioner and Physical Sky is found in a more intuitive location, the Lights panel. The Sun Positioner exists to position the sun in the scene. Date and location settings are found in the Sun Position rollout. Once the Sun Position object is created, the Environment map and Exposure Control plug-in are created with good default values. All parameters related to shading are only found in the Material Editor's Physical Sun & Sky rollout. This simplifies the workflow by avoiding duplication and also makes it less likely you will introduce inconsistencies.