Just came across this link which I thought may be of interest.  From what I
understand, it is a way of quick simulating radiosity (not accurately, but
maybe useful for preview renders?).

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/rtradiosity

Maybe this should be in off-topic?  Sorry if I posted into the wrong group.
Please move this message if necessary.

Regards,
Lee

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It depends on your definition of real-time radiosity. For example
quake2 and 3 (and other similar games) use "radiositied" scenes. The radiosity
has been precalculated and it's used as light maps. Of course it only works
for static scenes, but the scenes in those games are.
  If I'm not completely mistaken, the algorithm described in the article
needs a precalculation process (steps 1, 2 and 3). I don't see the difference
between this and the radiosity used currently in games (except that the latter
are better, although slower to precalculate, but that doesn't matter from
the point of view of the player).

  I think there may be some mistakes in that documentation. A quick look
revealed one detail that sounds more or less dubious:
  "I realized that diffuse light was
   merely specular light that was equally reflected in all
   directions within 90 degrees of the surface normal"

  I don't think it's equally reflected. I think that the amount of reflection
is proportional to the cosine of the angle between the reflecting ray and
the surface normal. This means that at 90 degrees the amount of reflected
light is 0, not full, as stated above.

-- 
main(i,_){for(_?--i,main(i+2,"FhhQHFIJD|FQTITFN]zRFHhhTBFHhhTBFysdB"[i]
):5;i&&_>1;printf("%s",_-70?_&1?"[]":" ":(_=0,"\n")),_/=2);} /*- Warp -*/

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