What is SIMULGEN?

Simulgen is a Esprit Open Long Time Research project that belongs to the IV Framework Programme of the European Union RTD activities. Its name stands for SIMULation of light in GENeral environments. We are currently in the second phase of this project, but you can find information about the first phase here. The second phase started in April 1999 and it will end at March 2002.

The project is carried out by four partners:

• GGG/IIiA, University of Girona (Spain)
• iMAGIS-GRAVIR/IMAG-INRIA, iMAGIS is a joint project of CNRS/INRIA/Université Joseph Fourier (Grenoble I) and Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (France)
• MPI - Informatik (Germany)
• LightWork Design Ltd (United Kingdom)

What do we do?

The project scope lies in the field of Computer Graphics, and specifically in Global Illumination. This area covers all algorithms that simulate the light transport in a given environment using physic laws. The results of these simulations can be used to produce images or animation sequences.

Global Illumination algorithms have been traditionally limited to radiosity, or diffuse phenomena. The first phase of SIMULGEN has clearly proven the feasibility of treating general environments which include glossy reflections and participating media using finite element algorithms.

The research of the project is aimed at two markets:

• Enhanced walkthrough systems, which will have the novel capacity to interactively view global glossy illumination and participating media.
• High-quality animation renderers which will use the advanced two-pass approaches developed in SIMULGEN.

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