Quote - An now, exactly the same scene and same picture for the envsphere, just playing with bias and math functions.

No more blue and more shadows and better specular reflection

Clearly, your own tests seem to indicate some better shadows can be achieved, just by adjusting the exposure of the image you used in the IBL.  Not saying you can achieve hard shadows, but it's a start.  Now what would happen if you used a properly exposed HDR image as the IBL image source?  Possibly even better results, without any direct light source?  Probably not, but that's the point of the article.  Nothing to do with Vray.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.