Visual simulation
Introduction
Visualization refers to any technique for creating images, diagrams, or animations in order to communicate a message. Representation through images has been a method of communicating concrete and abstract ideas since the beginning of humanity. Examples of this include cave paintings, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Greek geometry and also Leonardo da Vinci's revolutionary methods of technical drawing for engineering and scientific purposes.
Today, visualization has been extended to multiple applications in science, education, engineering (e.g., product visualization), interactive multimedia, and medicine, among other areas.
One of the typical applications of visualization is found in computer graphics. The invention of the graphics computer (and 3D graphics computers) represents the most important development in the field of visualization since the invention of central perspective in the Renaissance period. The development of animation, on the other hand, has also contributed to the advancement of visualization.
Overview
The use of visualization as a means of representing information is not new. It has been used in maps, scientific drawings, and graphs for over a thousand years. In the field of cartography, for example, we find Ptolemy's Geography (century AD), a map of China (1137 AD), and Minard's map (1861) that charts Napoleon's invasion of Russia a century and a half ago. Most of the concepts learned in creating these images are easily transferred to computer visualization. Edward Tufte has written three books that explain many of these principles.[1][2][3].
Computer graphics has been used from the beginning to study scientific problems. However, in the beginning the lack of graphical power of computers limited its usefulness. The recent emphasis on visualization began in 1987 with the publication of Visualization in Scientific Computing.[4] Since then, there have been several conferences and workshops, co-sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and ACM SIGGRAPH, dedicated to the topic in general, and to special areas of the field, such as volume rendering.
Most people are familiar with digital animations produced to present weather data on television, and television also offers scientific visualizations when showing reconstructions of road or airplane accidents. Some of the most popular examples of scientific visualizations are computer-generated images that show spacecraft in action, in a vacuum or on other planets. Dynamic forms of visualization, such as educational animation or timelines, can enhance learning about systems that change over time.