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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: 3, Interesting) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday July 21 2015, @07:29PM
For those of you worried about being blinded by these headlights, fear not! They thought of that:
To ensure that other drivers aren’t dazzled by laser lights, the R8 uses an intelligent camera-based system to detect oncoming or leading traffic. It actively adjusts and dims the light pattern, essentially wrapping other cars in a “cone of darkness.”
So if you're driving one of these cars, you'll be able to see everything except other traffic! Brilliant!
(no, I don't really think they're that dumb, I'm just going for a cheap laugh as usual)
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Tuesday July 21 2015, @08:22PM
I'm guessing you'd be able to see the headlights or taillights of other traffic, it being night, and lights being easy to see. I'm guessing pedestrians get full illumination which is also fine.
This is not to be construed as support for overly bright blinding lights. A class action suit against light manufacturers by third parties injured by cars with poorly installed lights would go a long way to reducing that bullshit.
(Score: 1) by islisis on Wednesday July 22 2015, @02:00AM
It's likely that the output can be actively modulated as well
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday July 22 2015, @10:18AM
There was a story a while back about a system (still in development) that tracked individual drops of rain and selectively de-illuminated them.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 21 2015, @09:46PM
> So if you're driving one of these cars, you'll be able to see everything except other traffic! Brilliant!
The other cars have their own headlights. You don't need to illuminate them. It is those headlights that the system uses to decide to wrap around them. If they are driving with their lights off, they will be fully illuminated by your lights.