Simulation and Visualization of Fluids in a Real-Time Application

Abstract

Fluids can be used to capture some of nature's most visually stunning phenomenasuch as fire, water or smoke realistically. The simulation and visualization of fluids has therefore always been of great interest in the past [1]. Fluids are now considered well-researched in computer graphics area [2]. However, fluid simulations have so far tended to be done in offline rendering, for example for animated films or in research and developmentused for flow simulations. Simulate fluid movement in real timewas long considered too expensive. Thanks to the recent development of graphics hardware,the real-time simulation of fluids is not only possible, fluid simulationscan even be used today in real-time applications such as game engines, among othersintegrate complex calculations. The algorithms were adapted in such a way thatthat they optimally utilize the highly parallel architecture of the GPUs[3, 4].

Physical processes such as the development of fluids are becoming a whole Simulated for a while using computer systems. Such simulations have basically two different goals. On the one hand, they are intended for scientific research to be physical correct, on the other hand they are intended for presentation purposes optically plausible for use in computer games, for example, and to be calculated efficiently. A physically plausible and with current Graphics hardware can also be used in real-time simulation of fluids with the help the Navier-Stokes equations suitable for numerical flow simulation.