A SCALABLE VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT FOR LARGE-SCALE SCIENTIFIC-DATA ANALYSIS

The growing complexity and sheer amount of data resulting from superco mputer simulations increases the need for new and intuitive analysis t echniques such as VR. In this paper we present a scalable VR system in tegrated in a distributed and collaborative visualization and simulati on environment which can be used for scientific data analysis and comp utational steering in several application domains. After discussing th e requirements for:uch a system we describe the basic architecture of the VR environment. We then give some examples of currently investigat ed application domains in the areas of water turbine optimization and space vehicle re-entry and comet impact simulation involving metacompu ting on a trans-atlantic scale. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.