System for Automated Interactive Lighting (SAIL)

Successful lighting in video games is more than a physically accurate illumination model. Aesthetics and function are of equal or greater importance. Lighting designers may deviate from physical accuracy to help a player identify an important object or to more powerfully evoke a desired emotion. Under the assumption that fulfilling the pipeline needs of interactive lighting design requires more than solving the computer rendering equation, we set out to develop a System for Automated Interactive Lighting (SAIL). The goal for SAIL was to develop an adaptive system that maintains lighting design goals (aesthetic and functional) in the context of unpredictable, interactive experiences. This paper presents SAIL and the results of a qualitative evaluation of SAIL’s contributions. We describe the algorithms of SAIL, where it succeeds, and where it fails. We conclude with a plan for future work