With the launch of Lightroom 6 and Lightroom CC, Adobe has released Camera Raw 9 with some of the some added features. Merge to HDR and Panorama are now available in ACR, using Raw image data to automatically assemble HDR and panoramic images, which are output as DNG files. This eliminates the need to edit files before merging them in Photoshop. Read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)