[rescue] SGI Challenge L systems available in Denver

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Sun, 26 Sep 2004 @ 16:20 -0400, Phil Stracchino said:

> On Sun, Sep 26, 2004 at 02:31:40PM -0400, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> > I prefer yellow light.
> > 
> > I wonder if that has something to do with being a human being on a
> > planet with a yellow sun?  Hmmm....
> 
> If you get a good blast of straight sunlight while your eyes are
> night-adapted, it'll look awful blue.  Our sun may technically be
> yellow, but our sunlight is very blue by the time atmospheric scattering
> gets done with it.

I know that... but that doesn't mean that an artificial light of the
same color will look like sunlight.  Also, sunlight also reflects the
colors of the local area: vegetation, airborne elements, buildings, etc.

The overall affect (outside of cities anyway) is definitely not a pure
white light.  Those look unnatural.

Also, despite the blue diffusion of atmospheric light, blue tinted
artificial lights don't look natural either unless the blue tinting is
_very_ slight.  Darker blue lights are generally very poor, though a lot
of people think they are cool looking.

In college we tested various light sources and most test subjects picked
a light that they called white, but which was actually a very, very
slightly yellow light.

Part of the reason is because obtaining purely white light or even very
bright blue required extreme brightness, which is often excessive for
the given situation.  

Very bright white lighting was regarded as not looking natural, and
flourescent was rated pretty low, even lower than obviously yellowish
incandescents.

One day at work a rare occurance made things really clear.  A room had
been emptied, and bright sunlight was shining in a bank of windows in
winter.

You could see side-by-side the difference between sunlight and the very
pure and very bright white flourescents (coated "super white" bulbs, 100
watts).  It looked like the carpet was two different colors.


-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["And in billows of might swell the Saxons
before her,-- Unite, oh unite!	Or the billows burst o'er her!" -- Downfall
of the Gael]