The Final Strech pt.1: Well, looks like it kind of works at least.
I decided to simply use an existing sample scene + some hdr skies for the demo in production, not like I have time to do anyting elaborate now anyway. I had some serious trouble getting the implementation to work with it though, the screen would suddenly go black without any discernible reason and without going back. Ultimately I found that it seems to have to do with OpenGLs basic texture manipulation functions, specifically the detail map for the terrain as it work now that it is removed. I also fixed an old problem with the lum adaptation related to the fact that the shader has to take in the value from the previous frame which I originally did with one texture by not clearing the backbuffer at render time. This caused the adaptation to occasionally fail to work, ending up black. It was solved by using two textures that are switched between frames.
For now I’m working on getting the settings to work well and expanding the GUI for the demo. There isn’t much left to do but on the other hand there isn’t much time left to do it since the deadline for the final milestone is next monday (whence ‘The Final Strech’). The plan is to devote the weekdays to making the most of the demo and then producing the documents over the weekend (heck, it’s worked before). Expect more entries over the next couple of days.