Common Questions and Concerns

The discussion is focussed on the following questions:

1. What is the improvement in the understanding of the data as compared to the situation without visualization?
2. Which visualization techniques are suitable for one's data? Are direct volume rendering techniques to be preferred over surface rendering techniques?
3. Can current techniques, like streamline and particle advection methods, be used to appropriately outline the known visual phenomena in the system?

The success of visualization not only depends on the results which it produces, but also depends on the environment in which it has to be done. This environment is determined by the available hardware, like graphical workstations, disk space, color printers, video editing hardware, and network bandwidth, and by the visualization software. For example, the graphical hardware imposes constraints on interactive speed of visualization and on the size of the data sets which can be handled. Many different problems encountered with visualization software must be taken into account. The user interface, programming model, data input, data output, data manipulation facilities, and other related items are all important. The way in which these items are implemented determines the convenience and effectiveness of the use of the software package as seen by the scientist. Furthermore, whether software supports distributive processing and computational steering must be taken into account.