DOES IT WORK?
The bright sparks at Audi have taken lighting capability to the next level, says Phil McNamara
Two lines of arrowheads are superimposed atop the motorway tarmac, pointing the way through the darkness for Audi’s revamped A8. Light isn’t leaking indiscriminately sideways but is focused on my chosen path – until I tap the indicator. Smoothly the rectangle of light projected forward switches through 90˚ to cover the lane I’m moving into, then switches back again to extend forward illumination.
Welcome to ‘directional lane light’, one of several groundbreaking lamp features introduced by the latest A8 (priced from £75,035), where new matrix LED headlamps crucially incorporate a digital micromirror device (DMD).
This DMD technology, used for video projectors in cinemas, incorporates 1.3 million micromirrors, each a few thousandths of a millimetre long. Chip controlled using data from the A8’s camera and sensors, each of the tiny mirrors’ angles can be adjusted up to 5000 times a second. As a result, the pixels of light can be masked or shone in a vast array of directions. Audi says lamps no longer generate a static beam but act like a continuously regenerating digital image.
Tech that automatically dips headlights for oncoming traffic is familiar, but the A8 noticeably takes it to the next level. Driving along the A127, light areas constantly blip on and off as oncoming cars pass to the side.
Its distance is prodigious too, unfurling down the road. On unl
