The Virtual Lighting Simulator is being developed by the Building Technologies Department of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Earnest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It allows you to quickly and easily see the effects of key parameters in daylighting and electric lighting designs. It contains a very large number of rendered images, which were computed using the Radiance lighting simulation software.

You can search and display images easily and quickly through a web-interface, by selecting values for key parameters through pop-up menus. The database is organized in two main modules: A Daylighting module that contains images of a small office space in the Los Angeles area, and an Electric Lighting module that contains images of a Classroom, a Small Office space, a Large Open Office space, a Large Box-type Warehouse, and a Small Retail Store. The daylighting module focuses on key daylighting parameters, while the electric lighting module focuses on key electric lighting parameters.

The images in both modules are displayed in a two-column format to allow for side-by-side comparison. The entries of one column can be copied to the other at any point through copy arrows at the bottom of the screen, to quickly setup a new base for comparisons.

PLEASE NOTE: This site is appears properly when screen fonts are displayed at medium on Internet Explorer or without any size adjustment on Netscape. Internet Explorer users - uncheck all formatting options in the Tools > Internet Options > Accessability menus. VLS does not work with the Macintosh v. of Internet Explorer. Netscape 4 users - make sure the 'Use document specified fonts' option in Edit > Preferences > Appearance > Fonts is checked. Netscape 7 users - make sure Edit > Preferences > Appearance > Fonts 'Allow documents to use other fonts' is checked.





The Virtual Lighting Simulator is being developed with support from Southern California Edison through the California Institute for Energy Efficiency (CIEE). Publication of research results does not imply CIEE endorsement of or agreement with these findings, nor that of any CIEE sponsor. This work was also supported by the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Building Technology, State and Community Programs, Office of Building Systems of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098.

For questions and/or feedback please contact MInanici@lbl.gov, phone at 510-486-4531.