OllieBrown

The more at look at the photon map visualizations the more I think that the shadows are there. If I view them from across the room and squint my eyes the density of photons seems to be less in the areas where the shadows from the boxes should be. Furthermore, the whole point of indirect illumination in this scene is to add light to the shadowed parts that direct illumination cannot account for so they shouldn't be as sharp and pronounced as in the direct lighting version.

So, I think it's safe to say that the photon emission phase is okay (or at the very least, it's not the source of the current problems). I went ahead and added some attenuation of the total photon count (now, the power is divided by the total number of photons being emitted) but as a principle of russian roulette you shouldn't decrease the power of bouncing photons so I think I'm going to leave it there.

Given the observation that light is getting under the boxes at the gathering phase I know that this phase needs more work. Furthermore, the kd-tree implementation at this phase is slower than it should be, not to mention the other problems I'm seeing (the really dim results) don't seem to be coming from the emissions phase, I think it's time to turn my attention there.