Todays rasterization graphics hardware provides
impressive speed and features making it the standard tool for
interactively visualising virtual prototypes early in the industrial
design process. However, due to inherent limitations of the
rasterization approach many optical effects can only be
approximated. For many products, in particular in the car and airplane
industry, the resulting visual quality and realism is inadequate as
the basis for critical design decisions. Thus the original goal of
using virtual prototyping --- reducing the number of costly physical
mockups --- often cannot be achieved.
Interactive ray tracing on a small cluster of PCs is emerging as an
alternative visualization technique achieving the required accuracy,
quality, and realism. In a case study this paper demonstrates the
advantages of using interactive ray tracing for a typical design
situation in the car industry: visualizing the prototype of
headlights. Due to the highly reflective and refractive nature of
headlights, proper quality could only be achieved using a fast
interactive ray tracing system.
