I think it is really cool how irradiance simulates realistic lighting effects, but in virtual environments. Light can behave dynamically. Do irradiance calculations and what you can do with them scale with computational power?

Intuitively, irradiance is the amount of light falling on a surface!

It seems like the intensity of light could affect the irradiance. I wonder what other factors can impact irradiance.

@ lycorisradiatu
I would believe that anything that affects the amount of light a surface is getting would affect the irradiance. This means distance, angle of incidence, surface properties, as well as things that affect intensity of light like shadows, obstructions, and atmospheric conditions, feel like they should affect irradiance.

For graphics rendering programs, are there any computation shortcuts that the program can take when calculating irradiance? Especially for scene with lots of reflection or complicated lighting

@carolyn-wang Irradiance is inherently local, maybe we could do some optimization similar to area-weighted lighting from project 2? e.x. finding the irradiance at vertice locations and interpolating them across the polygon