I think it's a bug, or some issue with how the model is shaded. You can see how the geometry of the pipe is the same, it's just an issue with the shading of those models (flat vs smooth shading).

A few more comparisons. Grass gets a wonderful amount of depth added to it by the AO.

The screen space global illumination is fun, but I've made sure to keep the impact at a minimum otherwise it looks weird on camera movement. That and some scenes just look wrong if it's too bright. So far the setup I've got looks good in every place I've been to (even foggy ones).

Definitely fooled me for a hot minute, thought that was real at first lol

Which scout model did you use? There's two, the regular player model and the tf_movies model. They're actually slightly different, and lots of shirt cosmetics have problems attaching correctly to the tf_movies model (although it's the preferable model to use otherwise)

Swirly looking bokeh is so cool looking

The first PC I ever owned was a laptop from ~2008 or so, an HP Pavilion. I don't remember the model name but I remember the general specs - it had an AMD dual core processor @ 2GHz, and a GeForce Go 7150m that I absolutely ABUSED. That little GPU ran so many games it was never designed to be near.

And a few more for good measure.