Screen-space ambient occlusion (SSAO) is an approximation of ambient occlusion, the idea that parts of an object which are crowded by other objects are occluded from the sky, and therefore are lit less from diffuse sky lighting. Thus, these areas should be darker than those which are more open to the sky. Traditional implementation involves raytracing and is too slow for real-time graphics. Instead, SSAO uses only surfaces which are present in screen space, and approximately calculates the concavity of a point compared to the other surfaces which have been drawn.

This application proposes that SSAO should be implemented for Second Life.