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from the one-more-step-to-sharks-with-lasers dept.
The supplemental laser spotlight—powerful enough to double the 300-meter range of the R8's standard LED high beams—offered a crucial performance edge at the Autodromo do Algarve, a 4.69-km road circuit and Formula One test facility in Portimao known for devilish blind corners and gut-check downhill plummets. It's a place where it's nice to see where you're going. Especially at night, in a street car, sans roll cage, that effortlessly tops 210 km/h—even with the track's longest straightaway denied to us for safety's sake.
...
In the Audi, each spotlight module houses four powerful, compact laser diodes, each just 300 micrometers in diameter. (The R8's standard headlamps feature 37 LED's in each unit to manage both low- and high-beam functions). Those diodes pump blue laser beams, at a wavelength of 450 nanometers, through phosphorus, which converts part of it to a warmer color. That phosphorescence (to state it with etymological exactitude), together with the remaining blue, creates white light at a color temperature of 5,500 Kelvin—an eye-pleasing, daylight-mimicking color temperature unmatched by even the best LED's.
Hooray, headlights that are even more blinding in your rearview mirror than the LED sort.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday July 21 2015, @06:57PM
laser
spotlight
The whole point of a laser is that it *doesn't* diffuse, which is exactly what you want your headlights to do at night. So I'm wondering whether it isn't really a laser, or it isn't really useful.
Reading the article and watching the video didn't really help either.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by WillR on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:25PM
(Score: 1) by rigrig on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:30PM
Burrowed through the links a bit, from http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/audi-lights-the-road-with-pixelated-laser-headlights [ieee.org] :
Audi is bringing out its Matrix Laser headlights, which incorporate a digital micromirror—an array of hundreds of thousands of tiny mirrors that reflect light from multiple laser diodes.
So they are actual lasers, and they could actually control the shape of the lighted area.
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 2) by mr_mischief on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:01PM
DLP headlights. Neat.
(Score: 2) by hankwang on Wednesday July 22 2015, @08:59AM
What do you mean: "you want diffuse light" or "you want non-diffuse light"? I'm asking because there is a point for both. With a non-diffuse light source, each point that is illuminated will receive only one ray of light, from one apparent point in the light source. For someone looking into the light source will see a tiny, extremely bright point source. Someone looking from a different position will see a point source as well, but for them, the point source may or may not be at a different apparent position relative to the lamp armature. This would be extremely unpleasant and possibly harmful to the eye (all the light entering the eye will be focused on a tiny spot on the retina).
So on the one hand, one wants a non-diffuse beam in order to be able to direct the light accurately. On the other hand, the light should be diffuse in order to reduce dazzling of other people. You can't have both; at best some kind of compromise.
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