Exploring flow fields in augmented reality environments

Specifically during the analysis and optimization stage within the product development process, e.g. in crash tests, structural optimization or flow simulations, VR techniques contributed to a minimum number of physical models in use and enhanced the evaluation stage. As a co-existence between virtual reality techniques and physical prototypes especially within this stage during product development will build the basis for further developments and research efforts, the adoption of augmented reality opens up new challenges to the research community. AR allows a new way of result exploration, its analysis and interpretation by keeping the relationship and context to the real environment. Up to date only a few approaches targeting the deployment of augmented reality during the analysis stage have been published. This is due to the nature of numerical simulations which burden further requirements to the usability of an AR based solution. The handling of large data sets at interactive rates becomes a crucial bottleneck and influences the successful introduction for augmented reality solutions within this area. In this paper we describe our approach for the use of AR during the analysis stage by introducing a "low cost", fully 3D interactive post processing unit for large CFD data sets around a physical mock-up.