Virtual Environments for Flow Simulations

This paper describes a software framework, based on virtual reality, for real-time immersive visualization of and interacting with flow simulation data. The objective of applying virtual reality techniques to flow simulation data is to explore the efficacy of combining the real-time interaction afforded by virtual reality based interactions with conventional visualization algorithms to gain better insight into flow features. Initial results from our earlier studies indicated a requirement for interrogative tools for the user-centred exploration in such environments. Such an interaction framework is afforded by the instantiation o an interaction toolkit within the software environement for visualization. The components of the virtual reality based visualization framework is illustrated using two examples from computational fluid dynamics. The dynamic use of the 3D interactions are demonstrated.