Online means it processes the items as they come[1]. This means the algorithm can't consider all the items at once, and has to try to be clever on the spot.
In my case the algorithm uswd would use the first k samples as the initial means, and would then find which of the k means were closest to the current sample, and update that mean[2].
Given that in parh tracing one would typically use a fairly large number of samples per pixel relative to k, this approach did a reasonable job of approximating the k means.
In my case the algorithm uswd would use the first k samples as the initial means, and would then find which of the k means were closest to the current sample, and update that mean[2].
Given that in parh tracing one would typically use a fairly large number of samples per pixel relative to k, this approach did a reasonable job of approximating the k means.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_algorithm
[2]: https://yokolet.com/2017/05/29/online-algorithm.html