   HDR in general
  I haven't found any good tutorials or papers on HDR in general, let alone GL.It seems the algorithm is:1.Render the scene normally into a floating point texture2.Perform bloom if we want it(Do I have to do all that down sampling and luminance stuff?)3.Tone map the values back from 0 to 1Can anyone suggest a tone map reference paper?It also seems in this example: linkThat HDR only works with lights that have values higher than 1. Which made sense to me from first understanding HDR. Is this correct?   
  What do you mean by "only works"? It always works.The two D3D demos are IMHO the absolute and definitive reference on HDR. There's another demo available (I think on delphi3d) which is pretty good, maybe you could check it out - i've never looked at it.Also, Programming Vertex and Pixel Shaders by Lengyel provides coverage of a few tone mapping operations, besides packing a whole bunch of extra information.I suppose you may also look at Rendering with natural light by Devebec, but this one is probably way more than you need.   