Simulation of New Automobile Lighting Systems for a Nightdrive Application

Abstract

For the development of new automobile lighting systems, special raytracing methods are needed to create physically correct simulations of the illumination properties. For further evaluation, test drives with physical prototypes are still necessary. But changing weather and lighting conditions make the test drive results not fully comparable. Therefore, a high number of test drives have to be performed. This leads to a costintensive and time-consuming development process. Virtual test drives at night combined with a realistic simulation of a lighting system’s illumination characteristics can minimize the number of real nightdrives and allow reproducible testing conditions as well as comparable results. A close-to-reality simulation poses high demands on real-time methods for calculating and displaying illumination data in a virtual scene. Furthermore, the geometry model of the scenery which is to be illuminated needs to be adapted to fulfill these demands. This paper introduces a real-time illumination method for use in a nightdrive simulation which illuminates scenery models using coarse polygon meshes.