More updates on Monday about Irradiance Caching

I'm currently still working on the irradiance caching implementation. The speed now is ~2 seconds for cache sampling and almost instantaneous rendering. However, there are still lots of visual glitches and I'm in the process of improving the image quality. This is a sketch of the irradiance caching algorithm:

1. In the image space, compute the error in all directions according to the classic irrandiance caching method. The error takes into account both spatial displacement and difference in normal. We sum up the errors to all the neighboring pixels for all the points in the image space in parallel.
2. Then, a probability based sample selection is performed, essentially picking sample points according to the error. The larger the error, the more likely the point is to become a sample.
3. Instead of storing the cache in a spatial acceleration structure such as a quad-tree, we directly compute the effective radius of each of the sample points in parallel. Then for all the pixels within the effective region of each sample points, we add a reference of the sample point. After this step, each pixel in the image space will have a list of irradiance caching sample points it needs to take into account, essentially trading space for time.
4. After the irradiance cache has been built, the rest of the rendering is done using the common method.

Due to the visual glitches as shown in the following image, I'm still working on the improvement, and hopefully I can post some updated results on Monday.