Games need more. The occluders from the paper completely absorb light. A more realistic occluder would also reflect light.

> The occluders from the paper completely absorb light. A more realistic occluder would also reflect light.

My understanding, "approximate occluders" aren't visible-geometry but stand-in replacements (very coarse to represent much finer-grained visible-geometry) during the GI pass(es). Probably even geometric primitives (sphere, box, torus etc pp) to, indeed, simply approximate occlusion.

Physically-based reflections across all geometry already works brilliantly well for the last few years in real-time.

it's important to note that this is for "mostly static scenes" so I'm not sure how suitable this is for games.

Most games are "mostly static scenes", where the level and lighting stays almost the same. Of course there is a varying amount of dynamic, moving objects but they don't necessarily need to have perfect indirect illumination (that would be hard to spot anyway, since the objects are on the move).

The primary contributor is from the games industry and the results they show were generated in <4ms, so this is probably specifically targeted at games.

There were even some "approximate dynamic occluders", which seem to work alright as long as the occluder isn't too near the camera.

Yes, but are most games mostly static scenes because the tech is limited? Getting a decent looking scene which can be rendered quickly has historically relied on precomputed light maps, light volumes and space partitioning, which massively restrict the sort of game you can make if you want scenes to look nice. If more could be done in realtime, we would see games which were not mostly static scenes.

I compare the situation to the 90s games. Machines did hardware scrolling and were optimised for blitting sprite sets. And so, lo and behold, most games are scrolling shooters and beat em ups. I always felt gpus have put similar constraints on our imaginations, hence most games are mostly static scenes.