Haptic rendering techniques for the interactive exploration of CFD datasets in virtual environments

Abstract

In pure CFD visualization tools, some flow features are hard to visualize such as the properties of a local flow probe. Haptic rendering techniques offer an intuitive understanding and allow more detailed insights than the visual perception solely. In our application framework ViSTA FlowLib for the interactive visualization and exploration of unsteady flows in virtual environments we implemented haptic rendering techniques as an add-on feature for the commonly used visualization algorithms for scalar and vector fields. We extended the ideas of Pao and Lawrence and developed new promising techniques.