But... when you turn on radiosity, the ambient light setting has two effects on
an object.  First, it determines to what extent radiosity will be used. 
Second, when computing radiosity, it acts like the old boring ambient at the
deepest depth of the gathering process.  This double effect is confusing and
requires tweaking to get things to look right, which is generally not a good
thing.

For a physically accurate (and subsequently most realistic) rendering, the
extent to which indirect lighting contributes to the scene should be computed
automatically, not specified by the user.  The user is just guessing and would
probably get it wrong.

Of course, I don't want to ditch the ambient setting completely.  I still  want
the ability to add light to my scenes via a bright ambient object.

-Nathan

Nieminen Mika wrote:
> 
>   I don't understand why this is so bad.
>   Of course if I don't want ambient light on an object, I set it to 0. If
> regardless of this the object still is illuminated by ambient light (for
> the radiosity calculations), then it doesn't work as I expected and wanted.
>   If you say "the ambient light is not illuminating this object" then it
> means that.
>

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