Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany have created a physically accurate rendering system capable of visualizing the effects of metamaterials designed to create “invisibility cloaks”. Previously theorized “ostrich effect” is plainly visible in the never-before-seen renderings.
The problem is that metamaterials may have optical properties that vary over their length. Rendering a room with such an object in it requires building hundreds of thousands of distinct volume elements that each independently interact with the light in the room. The standard software that scientists and engineers use to simulate light in a room only allows for a few hundred volume elements, which is nowhere close to the complexity needed to handle many metamaterials such as the carpet cloak, says Halimeh.
So he and his colleagues built the software needed to do just that. Wanting to demonstrate it, they rendered a virtual museum niche with three walls, a ceiling, and a floor. In the middle of the room, they place the carpet cloak — leading the observer to perceive a flat reflecting floor, thus cloaking the bump and any object hidden underneath it.
via Invisibility Visualized: New Software For Rendering Cloaked Objects.
