A User Study: Is the Advection Step in Shallow Water Equations Really Necessary?

Heightfield methods, such as the pipe method and shallow water equations (SWE), have often been used to simulate large areas of water. Of these, the SWE are often preferred due to being more realistic, but they are also more complex and demand more computational resources than the pipe method. These two methods were presented to over 40 subjects in both a gaming and a video context to see whether they report noticing the advantages of SWE compared to the pipe method. No significant differences were observed in any of the categories measured (hedonic valence, flow, spatial presence, realism). Therefore, using the simpler pipe method instead of the SWE should be considered. Also, varying the time step between 5 and 20 ms did not affect the user experience significantly.