Well, my renderer is far from done... But I have done some experiments that seem to prove I was right. I made a thread about distributed photon mapping recently. I was asking if by averaging multiple passes at lower photon densities, we could obtain a higher image quality with reduced noise, that would converge towards the right solution. Well, I programmed it, and here is what I obtained. This is direct photon map visualisation. I will eventually improve the system by using the photon map only for indirect illumination.
After 1 pass:
After 17 passes:
ApochPiQ said that by averaging, the image would end up losing its features and diverging. However, as you can see, it isn't the case. In fact, some image features are becoming clearer (there is a noticeable shadow over the sphere after 17 passes).
