Interactive visualization of complex real-world light sources

Interactive visualization of complex, real-world light sources has so far not been feasible. We present a hardware accelerated direct lighting algorithm based on a recent high quality light source acquisition technique. By introducing an approximate reconstruction of the exact model, a multi-pass rendering approach, and a compact data representation, we are able to achieve interactive frame rates. The method is part of the processing pipeline from light source acquisition to high quality lighting of a virtual world.