I had already designed the side part for this block but I wasn't happy with it.
As I started re-designing it I noticed how much all current deepslate blocks had awful AO.
So I did the 3 parts (top, bottom, side) of the reinforced deepslate block with a better AO design, which I backported to the other deepslate-related blocks.
(please note the changes on these blocks only apply to AO, nothing else was changed)
You saw the renders, now check out these in-game screenshots.
You'll also find a comparison of the old vs new AO in deepslate blocks below.
Screenshots
Old vs new AO comparison
Here I'll show the differences between old AO and new AO on deepslate and cobbled deepslate. I'm using Chocapic for those shots. Notice how each shot is the same in sunlight.
You can clearly see how inconsistent AO is on the current blocks. Cobbled deepslate has a very strong AO on the interstices, where regular deepslate AO is much softer with a very small radius.
Moreover those blocks are lacking the vanilla-pixel details on AO.
I changed all this to use a consistent occlusion depth and radius on interstices, and added the pixels back. Now all deepslate blocks (ores, cobbled, bricks, ...) are consistent.
Of course this also applies to the latest reinforced deepslate variant.
These changes are coming in the next PiXXL release.