Towards conceptual simulations within highly interactive environments

During the last few years, 3D interactive tools, such as Virtual Reality have been accepted by several application domains e.g. design and engineering. Nowadays Virtual Reality environments are used for design review purposes, visualization of large data sets or immersive simulations, but have been limited to single domains. Generative tools offer the possibility for new applications in design environments, whereas 4D representations in the engineering domain become feasible at interactive rates (> 30 Hz). This new capabilities increase the expectations of engineers towards fast "whatif" analysis, in which several aspects of the product validation can be tested in interactive sessions. Thus, the aim is to bridge the gap between traditionally separated design and engineering domains, in order to allow Conceptual Simulations for validating and improving the design from an engineering point of view (Design by Simulation). Therefore, we present a new approach and methodologies, which build the fundaments of this concept.