you’re missing the context of a scenario where baked static lighting isn’t used
for big levels the long iteration times and the huge memory footprint of lightmaps makes static lighting hardly an option. falling back to stationary or dynamic lighting then means relying on a skylight that will affect all areas the same, resulting in an unwanted homogenous lighting everywhere. this is especially problematic in games with indoor-outdoor transitions where going inside a house or a cave and having the outdoors skylight really doesn’t cut it. R[COLOR=#252C2F][SIZE=13px]eflection captures share the same principle: they are used because using the Skylight cubemap as a homogenous reflection really wouldn’t cut it.
the engine’s solution to avoid homogenous lighting is DFAO but it’s not really effective. it essentially means blocking the skylight so it’s not a replacement for ambient lighting. DFAO will still let come skylight through, and even if you manage to make it block all the skylight, then you’re rid of any sort of ambient lighting. also DFAO has a maximum effective range, and any game probably would need to have it toggleable if you want it to run on low-end hardware.
btw local IBL is a tried and tested technique (read up about it here). just because UE4 does things one way it doesn’t mean it’s the only way. specially when you really can’t use UE4’s way.
I don’t mean to derail the thread into a full IBL discussion though :)[/SIZE][/COLOR]