Visualization: the look of reality

The need to understand behavior, be it of objects, systems, or organisms, bred the need to simulate it visually, which has been in turn the prime catalyst in the use of computer graphics. A 1987 National Science Foundation report helped give the term "visualization" a place in the computing lexicon, and by now the field has generated a multibillion-dollar industry in software, hardware, and related equipment. Visualization is the process of making visible what is hard or impossible to see in the physical world. It therefore embraces the display of volumetric data and representations of fields and mathematical phenomena, plus distributed visual processing the use of animation (to add the dimensions of time and motion to a subject), and the mating of visualization capabilities with software for such tasks as finite-element analysis. The author discusses visualization and its benefits and applications.<>