Night Driving Headlamps in the Virtual World: The Implementation of a Physically Exact Real-Time Simulator for Headlamp Analysis

With the advent of affordable high-powered computers, one is able to virtually night-drive a headlamp system. Supplying a night-drive simulator on-site at its customers' facility allows engineers easy transfer of data files, enabling night drives in the virtual world anytime, day or night. The simulator is physically exact, giving optical engineers and their customers the ability to accurately assess and predict the performance of a headlamp system. Anomalies in the beam pattern can be detected and corrected without costly tooling investments. The real-time headlight simulator affords the benefits of validation testing and benchmark evaluation, while reducing design and development cycle time.