An interactive volume visualization system for transient flow analysis

This paper describes the design and performance of an interactive visualization system developed specifically for improved understanding of time-varying volume data from thermal flow simulations for vehicle cabin and ventilation design. The system uses compression to allows for better memory utilization and faster data transfer, hardware accelerated rendering to enable interactive exploration, and an intuitive user interface to support comparative visualization. In particular, the interactive exploration capability offered by the system raises scientists to a new level of insight and comprehension. Compared to a previous visualization solution, such a system helps scientists more quickly identify and correct design problems.