Ambient Occlusion
Ambient Occlusion is an advanced shading technique that imparts depth and realism to the visualization by darkening areas of the visible geometry that would receive less ambient light from the environment, such as holes, creases, or inside corners of models. Ambient Occlusion makes it easier to perceive shapes, especially for complex geometries such as intricate lattices.
In nTop, Ambient Occlusion is enabled by default. Disabling this feature can improve graphics performance (framerate) on systems with low-end graphics cards, especially when using very high-resolution screens, at the cost of reduced visual fidelity.
In the context of nTop, this feature provides a sense of depth to complex geometries, particularly lattices and intricate structures, and assists in feature discernibility. Ambient Occlusion is ON by default in nTop since it supports core workflows, however it can always be turned off using a toggle in the Settings (Display>Scene Lighting).
The following images compare the graphics visualization with and without ambient occlusion.