They used to be in the N panel, but not anymore. The obvious place now would be in the “shading” options for each view mode, but regardless of mode selected, I don’t see any.
I hope their omission from the “shading” options is temporary, but could anyone please point out where they stuck them as of now?
Its in the render tab now where reflections, volumetrics, and bloom are.
Ok, but that then should mean that it only works for the rendered view mode, and actually, that does seem to be the case (silver lining: finally something logical in Blender, yay).
So they removed the option for the solid and textured view modes? Is this another missing 2.7 option that we’re waiting to be put back?
Neither the new cavity setting nor the new shadow setting produce the same effect.
@anon12133251 is right, when using eevee, for the solid view, you want the cavity setting enabled:
This has the added advantage of ridge highlighting as well, to do a reverse ao effect on pointy edges
As I said, cavity doesn’t reproduce the same effect.
And god damnit, the ambient occlusion in the render tab affects the textured view mode as well, so no, turns out it’s the same old, illogical Blender again. 
Is this the correct forum to give UI feedback about these things? I feel there’s too little talk about it here…
You could try posting in the 2.8 viewport thread:
From what I am seeing, if you disable ridge shading, it matches the 2.79 Viewport AO pretty closely:
That’s not my experience. Also, from both of those options (cavity and ao), the strength boost slider from 2.79 is missing.
care to share some screenshots of what you are seeing?
I’m 95% sure that the cavity shading option is based on the old AO code, and from what I see it functions very similarly. The strength is a little off, and it is missing the color option, but everything else is there:
Hey. I don’t know if you found what you need, but I kind of found it. I also looked for this function, it is very useful! It really is under the Cavity checkmark, but in 2.81 there is a drop-down menu next to the checkmark. And there you need to change Screen to World. And then there will be the same effect as in 2.79. I hope it helped)
This is NOT the same. Old AO worked even in case when one object was inserted in another, but new “cavity” works only if object is solid.
I need it in solid view 
Old AO in viewport corresponds to World type of Cavity.
By default, Cavity is the less heavy one : Screen type.
But if you change it to World, you have same thing as in 2.79.
You can also combine both.
That is not so true as I want it to be. Or I do something wrong. I have both Screen And World enabled and result is absolutely different with 2.79
What I meant is that is the same principle.
But you are right.
I concede that if you open a 2.79 file : you don’t have same result.
Settings are not saved in the file. OpenGL renderer in 2.79 is not 2.8’s Workbench.
There is no color setting. They changed range according 2.8 testers feedback to deliver something closer to EEVEE’s AO.
But you can obtain a similar result.
You have to enable Cavity, set it to World and adjust setting in pop-up.
If you see nothing, increase Valley value.
Max Soft limit is 2.5. But Max Hard Limit is 250.
Quite an old thread, but I really miss good ol’ Blender 2.79b AO color option. Could make the cavities a bit lighter to resemble (even if by a little bit) Wax setting from Zbrush. I’ll probably do a proposal to bring it back, even if I think it probably won’t get accepted.
