Quote - Here are the AO settings I used on the IBL.

There's something that jumps out here and if you don't see it right away, then you're not very familiar with AO.

I had to raise the samples to 35 just to get the crappy results I showed. It used to be sufficient to use 7 samples. I wrote an extensive thread on how best to use AO back in the Poser 6 era, and 7 samples was more than sufficient to produce smooth, clean shadows.

Now, even at 35 (5x higher than before) it produces something very different and, IMO, unusable. Something has drastically changed in the implementation of AO, and it's not worth figuring out because IDL is so much better. IDL deals with occlusion shadows and bounced light. AO only deals with occlusion shadows.

Just an idea, because i do not have that version: Perhaps they forgot to enable irradiance caching on the light-AO (if this was introduced with the button that disables IC). That would also explain the longer render times. Could be tested by trying the light-AO with and without IC, and see if they differ.