Ferienakademie 2010, Course 9
Simulation Meets Visualization: Insight, not Numbers!

The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers
(Richard Hamming 1961)
The purpose of computing numbers is not yet in sight
(Richard Hamming 1997)

When simulation and visualization meet, it is a get-together of good old friends and they can look back on a glorious history in the joint effort to extract information from simulation results and to turn numbers into insight.

Their relation is much more intense than just "Here are the numbers" - "And here are the pictures", especially as modern technology and requirements open the way for closely interwoven developments:

• In computational steering, simulation results have to be provided in real time, in order to allow for user interaction and to show the effect of the user's input
• In computer graphics, physical modelling gets more and more important - for example, when items like cloth or liquids have to be simulated for realistic dynamic scenes, which is possible due to the enormous computing power that is available today as well due to sophisticated methods
• Speaking of computing power: modern graphic engines provide it in an amount that makes them highly attractive for other computing tasks - General-Purpose computation on Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU)

To investigate these topics from different viewpoints, we intend to bring together students from mathematics, informatics, physics, and engineering in our course. To have maximum benefit from our course, it is important that you are willing to cooperate with the students from the other fields: learning about the topics that they bring into the program, but also giving a talk on a topic of your area of interest that can be understood by your (hopefully also cooperative) colleagues from other disciplines.

Course language is English (actually: something like English - so you do not have to worry if your English is not that good).

And of course: The seminar programme is only one part of the Ferienakademie - despite the possibilities of simulation and visualization, the real mountains are still attractive and we will do a lot of hiking!

The "Simulation Pipeline"