Immersive visualization of dynamic CFD model results

With immersive visualization the engineer has the means for vividly understanding problem causes and discovering opportunities to improve design. Software can generate an interactive world in which collaborators experience the results of complex mathematical simulations such as computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modeling. Such software, while providing unique benefits over traditional visualization techniques, presents special development challenges. The visualization of large quantities of data interactively requires both significant computational power and shrewd data management. On the computational front, commodity hardware is outperforming large workstations in graphical quality and frame rates. Also, 64-bit commodity computing shows promise in enabling interactive visualization of large datasets. Initial interactive transient visualization methods and examples are presented, as well as development trends in commodity hardware and clustering. Interactive, immersive visualization relies on relevant data being stored in active memory for fast response to user requests. For large or transient datasets, data management becomes a key issue. Techniques for dynamic data loading and data reduction are presented as means to increase visualization performance. (author)