New treatment of strongly anisotropic scattering phase functions: The delta-M+ method

The treatment of strongly anisotropic scattering phase functions is still a challenge for accurate radiance computations. The new delta-M+ method resolves this problem by introducing a reliable, fast, accurate, and easy-to-use Legendre expansion of the scattering phase function with modified moments. Delta-M+ is an upgrade of the widely used delta-M method that truncates the forward scattering peak with a Dirac delta function, where the "+" symbol indicates that it essentially matches moments beyond the first M terms. Compared with the original delta-M method, delta-M+ has the same computational efficiency, but for radiance computations, the accuracy and stability have been increased dramatically.