[SotCodeLaureate]

These are just standard OBJ files with diffuse textures only and trivial material settings (all white). Additional there is some metadata that specifies that the same data is to be used as displayable model and collision geometry.

So, essentially, this data is highly portable, photoreal aesthetics is not really a goal. (Also see some notes in the paper, e.g. "Limitations of the Dataset".)

[pj_mukh]

Well now I'm curious, is the claim that photoreal-ness doesn't matter when training network for the real world. Weird.

[SotCodeLaureate]

Removing lighting before object recognition may be a separate step, yes. But in this case it's just that their goal is to scan objects, shapes as such, and not intrinsic properties of their constituent materials (such as specularity).