Laminar Research Explains Photometric Lighting

Here is a post from Laminar Research explaining why photometriclighting is so important when it comes to creating an immersiveenvironment:

What Is a Photometric Renderer?

Simply put, a photometric renderer is one that tries to createrealism by using actual real world light levels (specified in realphysical units) in its internal calculations. In other words, werender the world as it is.

A decade ago, the image of the world you saw through your simulatorwas essentially built out of pre-made images drawn in Photoshop byartists. These images were drawn as realistically as possible, butthey were low dynamic range (LDR) because that's all the monitor couldhandle. The sky was as blue as the art director decided, and thencreated with Photoshop. This worked great in its time, but withtoday's modern graphics cards we can do much better.

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