A Glare Effect Application to Headlamp Design Verification

Abstract

Glare effect is widely used in games and entertainment field as a computer graphics special effect. In this paper, we propose a method to render glare phenomena with high reproduction fidelity and introduce its application to lamp design. Our method simulates a diffraction phenomenon which takes place in the human eye visual system, and pre-computes a glare pattern taking the spectral energy distribution of the light source into account. In rendering, it generates an HDR image from the directional energy distributions of the light source in accordance with the viewing angle, tone-maps and composes the image at the light location. We visualized high intensity light sources such as automobile headlamps directly viewed from the eye and produced results useful to evaluate how glare affects the eyesight. © 2010, The Institute of Image Electronics Engineers of Japan. All rights reserved.