Phong was intentional, since it's more accurate (I am aware it's slower).

Actually Blinn-Phong produces more accurate results (try both at glancing angles and you'll see how bad Phong looks!), to even better results try Enery conserving Blinn-Phong.

QFE. The tl;dr version is that Blinn-Phong is actually an approximation to evaluating a Gaussian centered on the halfway vector.

In more plain English, you're using some statistics hacks to guess what fraction of the total surface of the area to be shaded is angled in such a way to bounce light towards you/give you laser eye surgery if it starts out coming from the light in question.

EDIT: And for extra credit, use Toksvig filtering to account for actual texture detail in the normal map!

EDIT 2: Also

float NdL = max(0.0f, dot(Normal, LightVector));

makes me really, really angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. Do

float NdL = saturate(dot(Normal, LightVector));

instead to avoid my wrath.

For clarification, you're wasting precious GPU time with those max() operations that you could be getting for free with a saturate modifier. You might think that the compiler can optimize this. You'd be wrong, though-- remember that the dot product itself does not have a defined range and that the compiler generally lacks sufficient context to know that you're dotting normalized vectors.

Phong was intentional, since it's more accurate (I am aware it's slower).

Actually Blinn-Phong produces more accurate results (try both at glancing angles and you'll see how bad Phong looks!), to even better results try Enery conserving Blinn-Phong.

QFE. The tl;dr version is that Blinn-Phong is actually an approximation to evaluating a Gaussian centered on the halfway vector.

In more plain English, you're using some statistics hacks to guess what fraction of the total surface of the area to be shaded is angled in such a way to bounce light towards you/give you laser eye surgery if it starts out coming from the light in question.

EDIT: And for extra credit, use Toksvig filtering to account for actual texture detail in the normal map!

EDIT 2: Also

float NdL = max(0.0f, dot(Normal, LightVector));

makes me really, really angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. Do

float NdL = saturate(dot(Normal, LightVector));

instead to avoid my wrath.

Phong was intentional, since it's more accurate (I am aware it's slower).

Actually Blinn-Phong produces more accurate results (try both at glancing angles and you'll see how bad Phong looks!), to even better results try Enery conserving Blinn-Phong.

QFE. The tl;dr version is that Blinn-Phong is actually an approximation to evaluating a Gaussian centered on the halfway vector.

In more plain English, you're using some statistics hacks to guess what fraction of the total surface of the area to be shaded is angled in such a way to bounce light towards you/give you laser eye surgery if it starts out coming from the light in question.

EDIT: And for extra credit, use Toksvig filtering to account for actual texture detail in the normal map!

Phong was intentional, since it's more accurate (I am aware it's slower).

Actually Blinn-Phong produces more accurate results (try both at glancing angles and you'll see how bad Phong looks!), to even better results try Enery conserving Blinn-Phong.

QFE. The tl;dr version is that Blinn-Phong is actually an approximation to evaluating a Gaussian centered on the halfway vector.

In more plain English, you're using some statistics hacks to guess what fraction of the total surface of the area to be shaded is angled in such a way to bounce light towards you/give you laser eye surgery if it starts out coming from the light in question.