  We present computer simulations of interferometric imaging with the Very
Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) of the European Southern Observatory
(ESO) and the Astronomical MultiBEam Recombiner (AMBER) phase-closure
instrument. These simulations include both the astrophysical modelling of a
stellar object by radiative transfer calculations and the simulation of light
propagation from the object to the detector (through atmosphere, telescopes,
and the AMBER instrument), simulation of photon noise and detector read-out
noise, and finally data processing of the interferograms. The results show the
dependence of the visibility error bars on the following observational
parameters: different seeing during the observation of object and reference
star (Fried parameters r_0,object and r_0,ref ranging between 0.9m and 1.2m),
different residual tip-tilt error (delta_tt,object and delta_tt,ref ranging
between 0.1% and 20% of the Airy disk diameter), and object brightness
(K_object=0.7mag to 10.2mag, K_ref=0.7mag). Exemplarily, we focus on stars in
late stages of stellar evolution and study one of its key objects, the dusty
supergiant IRC+10420 that is rapidly evolving on human timescales. We show
computer simulations of VLT interferometry (visibility and phase closure
measurements) of IRC+10420 with two and three Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs; AMBER
wide-field mode, i.e. without fiber optics spatial filters) and discuss whether
the visibility accuracy is sufficient to distinguish between different
theoretical model predictions.
