and a lot of the more obvious approaches don't work for some technical reason or another. I'd like to hear if anyone actually makes a complete level with this techique. 

this sounds awesome, tbh. but, what does it mean for render time? will these baked on lightmaps be easier on the game than the normal dynamic lights (i am guessing yes). if so, does this mean that large outdoor areas are now possible?

i'm guessing we can bake on more than just sunlight? 

you can bake all you want

its just +one more texture chan per face, consider it free performance-wise

its really hard to do (time consuming, both setting up and rendering)

and you will still need actual lights to affect normalmaps and models

... and I cant load that page now

some one call ydnar!