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1. GPU-Accelerated Forward Ray Tracing One of the most significant performance upgrades is the introduction of GPU acceleration for forward ray tracing. Depending on the model complexity and hardware, engineers can expect performance gains ranging from 10x to over 50x. It supports point and surface sources (including fully immersed sources), various receiver meshes, volume scattering models (Gegenbauer, Henyey-Greenstein), measured BSDF, Microfacet scatter models, and optical cementing. This allows designers to run high-fidelity simulations with hundreds of millions of rays much earlier in the design iteration process without waiting days for CPU-only results.
2. VisionSym Integration for Interactive Backward Ray Tracing LightTools 2026 integrates with VisionSym, Keysight’s GPU-accelerated backward ray tracing engine designed for progressive, interactive visualization. It delivers 10x to 30x faster rendering compared to traditional methods, allowing for progressive image refinement. Engineers can interactively rotate the camera and see rays continue tracing and updating the image in near real-time. The integration includes automatic aiming for scatter surfaces, specialized algorithms for reduced pixel noise, and support for Environment Sources.
3. Enhanced Stray Light Analysis New tools have been added to make stray light workflows more repeatable and memory-efficient. Users can now import and export ray path files for better reproducibility, and limit the number of rays per path to significantly reduce memory usage. Multiple physical surfaces can be grouped and treated as a single ray path contributor, which dramatically reduces the number of generated paths when analyzing complex CAD geometries. Updates to the Ray Path Analyzer utility and the Compute Filtered Mesh Data option streamline post-processing.
4. AR Waveguide Designer Improvements The AR Waveguide Designer has been upgraded to better handle the interdependent design space of AR/VR systems. The software streamlines the creation of Input Couplers (IC), Eye Pupil Expanders (EPE), and Output Couplers (OC) using K-space diagrams. It supports geometric mirror-based, Surface Relief Gratings (SRG), and Volume Bragg Gratings (VBG). It also integrates seamlessly with RSoft UDOP data to handle spatially varying gratings. The update includes built-in tools for uniformity, eyebox analysis, and stray light identification.
5. Meta-Optic Lens (Metalens) Modeling To support the rise of meta-optics, LightTools 2026 enables system-level simulation of metalenses. Engineers can represent rigorous electromagnetic (EM) meta-optic behavior as physically accurate optical surface properties using extended BSDF models. This captures wavelength- and polarization-dependent behavior, allowing meta-lenses to be analyzed alongside conventional optics, scattering surfaces, and mechanical structures in a unified ray-based workflow. This approach perfectly complements RSoft electromagnetic solvers.
6. Expanded CAD Interoperability The CAD import workflow has been significantly improved to maintain design intent when bringing in complex mechanical assemblies. The software now supports NX, Creo, and Rhino formats. The import process maintains assembly and sub-assembly hierarchies, preserves part names and object colors, and maintains optical properties at the part or surface level. The update also includes a beta feature for synchronized CAD updates.