From laboratory tests on the individual components, to the effects that the assembled and installed products have on the roadway, or the sidewalk running alongside. This is the most impressive and technologically advanced test setting of NERI, a sort of wind tunnel, where the light blows instead of wind. This is the workplace of lighting designers, engineers, designers, architects, who can measure the reach of every new idea, up to the degree of comfort that can be felt by a motorist or a pedestrian walking along a hypothetical waterfront. All this is done through a realistic and immersive simulated experience created by a simulator specifically built for the innovation and experimentation needs of the company. A valuable component for all projects, often required by universities and technical institutes in order to perform tests and very specific simulations, otherwise impossible to conduct anywhere else in Europe.
A setting similar to a street makes it possible to simulate a real installation, with the same characteristics in terms of distance between posts and street geometry proportions. These characteristics make it possible to assess lighting effects at ground level, also thanks to a porous covering such as asphalt. During this test, it is possible to walk around within the lighting project and see the results with your own eyes. The maxi screen also shows the equivalence between calculations (spot and isolux) and the actual situation.
The installation of light fittings on a post, with a set distance between each one, means it is possible to assess the visual comfort of NERI’s lighting systems and even to compare them with competitors’ systems. This information, which is barely identifiable using standard simulations or technical lighting calculations, is never totally appreciable without real experience. In fact, the eye is the ultimate and only instrument available when it comes to assessing the real comfort of a light source.
Lighting quality can be wholly measured in a laboratory. The most faithful perception of lighting colour is certainly seeing it as it really is. LEDs in particular are light sources with great differences in colour according to the way in which the emission angle varies. Therefore, it can be surprising how LED sources can be seen in different colour tones on the ground: some areas are lighter blue or greener than others. This visual test allows us to assess and select the ideal sources and optical systems that best correspond to lighting of the highest quality.