VISUALIZATION AS ALTERNATIVE TO TESTS ON LIGHTING UNDER REAL CONDITIONS

This paper presents a lighting simulation method development that has taken place over more than a decade since these techniques started functioning. Although it has taken so much time, the photo-realistic computer visualization of lighting is still not so commonly applied. It may have been because a relatively small number of publications on this issue and a limited number of professional training courses devoted to its use for designing the lighting systems. Design offices, especially as far as the architectural structure floodlighting is concerned, still prefer traditional methods based on the tests with the use of a real lighting equipment in the real conditions. The paper compares these two methods, showing their advantages and disadvantages with an example of complex floodlighting project.