An Immersive and Interactive Visualization System for Large-Scale CFD

We have been long involved in large-scale computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations in aerospace research. These days, as the computer power grows, output data from the simulations becomes larger and larger, and we feel that the current visualization methodology has its limitation in understanding. Thus, with the target concepts of reality, collaboration, and communication, we has built an immersive and interactive visualization system with a large-sized wall-type display. The system, which has been in operation since April 2001, is driven by a SGI Onyx 3400 server with 32 CPUs, 64Gbytes memory, and 6 IR3 graphics pipelines, and comprises a 4.6×1.5-meter (15×5-foot) rear projection screen with 3 high-resolution CRT projectors, supporting stereoscopic viewing, easy color/luminosity matching, and accurate edge-blending. The system is mainly used for visualization of large-scale CFD simulations. This paper will describe the new visualization system introduced at the National Aerospace Laboratory of Japan, and the features of the system are discussed while illustrating some typical visualized examples.