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From: rick@hanauma.stanford.edu (Richard Ottolini)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Scientific visualization, philosophic question
Keywords: productivity,
Message-ID: <1515@med.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 14 Jun 90 22:23:22 GMT
References: <6719@amelia.nas.nasa.gov>
Sender: news@med.stanford.edu (USENET News System)
Organization: Stanford University, Department of Geophysics
Lines: 27

In article <6719@amelia.nas.nasa.gov> eugene@wilbur.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya) writes:
>A meeting was just held here at Ames on the topic of scientific
>visualization, where it's going, etc.  There was a lot of discussion

Scientific visualization has been absolute essentially in the petroleum
exploration, both in the analysis of 3-D data and devising algorithms to
improve the appearance of the data.  Before 1975 seismic prospecting was
essentially irrelevant in the discovery of oil.  Seismic pictures did not
well match what was inside the earth.  Since then geophysics has gotten so
much more accurate that we are discovering oil "too fast" resulting in a
worldwide glut.  One of the more important tools have been the surface-slicing
volume visualization tools used for past dozen years or so.
We could neither understand the complicated 3-D interrelationship of geologic
objects nor aspects of seismic wave propagation without these tools.

I think the remote sensing / weather satellite people and medical people
could make similar claims.

Note that these three cases involve OBSERVATIONAL DATA ANALYSIS.
Many visualization demos use PSEUDO DATA generated by modeling / simulation
programss.  Many of this program generate weak or unconvincing results
because the science is imperfectly understood or the computers aren't
powerful enough yet.  Garbage into a visualization program will result in
a scientifically unconvincing picture.

The goal of scientific visualization is insight.  Jazzy display features
or poor inputs don't fool scientist for long.