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# screenSpaceAmbientOcclusionNormalThreshold

The magnitude of the blur effect applied to create ambient occlusion shadows.

```
var screenSpaceAmbientOcclusionNormalThreshold: CGFloat { get set }
```

## Discussion

Ambient occlusion is an effect that improves material shading by calculating the amounts of ambient light that reach various parts of a surface, creating shadows on parts of a geometry where incoming light is obscured by other parts of the geometry. (You can provide pre-rendered ambient occlusion effects for a material using its [`ambientOcclusion`](/documentation/SceneKit/SCNMaterial/ambientOcclusion) property.) *Screen-space ambient occlusion* (SSAO) provides a real-time approximation of this effect for the entire scene viewed through the camera.

SSAO shadowing includes a blur effect to realistically soften differences in shadow between adjacent pixels, which depends on both the smoothness of scene geometry and this factor. Larger blur factors create a softer, more spread-out blur; smaller factors create coarser shadowing effects.

---

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