Hello,
I am learning about path tracing and I have a doubt about ambient occlusion. Specifically, why do we need AO in path tracing? Path tracing with global illumination already shoots rays around the normal hemisphere to take diffuse/specular indirect light, direct light into account and naturally leads to soft shadows (where appropriate), so to me it seems like doing almost the same thing twice if we add AO in a path tracing context (AO does not even exist in the real world). I do understand how it is useful in rasterization though, where it can fake some soft shadows to increase perception of depth.