So I been thinking about this for a while and tried to google for an answer but without any success.
If all your textures are 8bit LDR images, like JPEGs, couldn't that potentially cause conflicts with exposure control/tone mapping when rendering. That is if you adjust the rendering exposure of your image that should expose detail in the textures that aren't really there, since they been clamped out by the low dynamic range. So wouldn't it make sense to also have the textures as HDR images, saved as .exr, in linear colour space with 16bit half-float to get a good colour representation (32bit "full" float might be overkill?). To have more detailed and correct colour values might also, I figure, have an effect on GI and how colour bleed is calculated?
Or is it simply not necessary since the end result of the rendering we want is probably going to be similar to the exposure level of the texture when it was photographed any way? And since camera mostly shoot in 12-14bit you would have to take multiple exposures of the texture and do all that extra work to piece them all together to one HDRI.
Edit: To clarify, I'm mostly interested in this from a photo realistic rendering point of view, with ray trace renderers (like mental ray, V-Ray, Arnold, etc.) with full light simulations and global illumination, rather then for real-time game engines.