Yeah thats an interesting way to do it. I tried it myself with and without it on an mia x material, it worked better with the node plugged in, moreso than the actual shaders built in AO. Preferably though I would just rather a separate overide pass for AO on the object anyway without adding it to the shade in reflection. Also try Diffuse convolusion maps, this is a blurred version of the environment added as another type of reflection pass that is also known as Ambient environment to give off a light bounce effect. Use PS to comp it over either in Overlay or Screen mode. The technique was used in Avatar under the Spherical Harmonics lighting setup, which is something I am hoping to get a tute done of soon. cheers jay