@nathanletwory Great work!
Looking at this demo I was wondering if this idea would be a cheap way to improve the experience:
Instead of building the image starting with black and adding illumination information as it’s computed, what if the engine would record the average pixel color of the image (updated each time an higher number of cycles is reached) and using this value as the "background"
This would diminish the flashing effect we see each time the view is updated and it would seem to be smoother.
If it’s not possible to get that average value fast enough, maybe try with a median grey instead of black?