RADYNVR: a Radiance Tool for Simulating Dynamic Natural Lighting for VR Applications

Light impacts how we perceive environments, with recent studies focusing on the perception of dynamic luminous patterns of natural light. Immersive virtual reality is valuable for such studies since it offers complete control over the lighting in an environment. However, tools for generating virtual environments with dynamic natural lighting are limited. To address this, we present RADYNVR (Radiance Dynamic Virtual Reality), a simulation tool that offers an accurate and straightforward method to create virtual environments with dynamic natural lighting using Radiance. Key features of the tool are the ability to create shadow patterns of leaves swaying in the wind, and the efficient and accurate simulation of two characteristics of sunlight, solar penumbras and pinhole projections.