This activity is vital if visualization requirements of researchers remote from the Grand Challenge computing hardware are to be met. However, the working group noted that much of this effort is currently aimed at visualization of significantly much smaller datasets than are common in the Grand Challenge applications community. Special efforts of this sort targeted at support for Grand Challenge applications are needed in the future. The working group also discussed research activities in developing virtual reality environments in relation to the Grand Challenge applications. Both immersive displays and large flat-screen displays were discussed.
Visualization can produce comprehensible views of real systems such as automobiles and airplanes.
The principal advantage of these efforts for Grand Challenge applications was agreed to be their potential help in dealing with the visualizations of extremely complex systems. A brief discussion of fundamental research in visualization techniques noted that the NSF Science and Technology Center for Computer Graphics and Scientific Visualization is developing new rendering techniques that are more soundly based upon the physics of radiative transfer and scattering. These new techniques should be capable of producing much more photorealistic images of real systems, such as automobiles and airplanes. The usefulness of these techniques in enhancing the perception of physical systems that cannot normally be seen by the eye, such as complex molecules or the structure of the earth's magnetosphere, remains to be seen. Presumably, success will depend upon the extent to which familiar visual cues, such as surface textures, can be employed to convey significant scientific data in these unfamiliar settings.