“Blowing Snow” is a simplified simulation of wind interacting with the person who is being tracked inside the CAVE. CAVE participants control wind direction and velocity. Particles (snowflakes) from the upwind direction bounce off the person being tracked; vortices develop downwind from the person being tracked. Wind sounds are affected by user input; sound volume is tied to wind velocity and sound localizatioin is tied to wind direction.

This CAVE experience is actually an experiment to determine how visible the flow patterns are when thousands of tracing patterns are introduced. Virtual reality’s excellent 3D characteristics enable the use of large numbers of particles, which would probably be self-obscuring in a normal 2D display environment. This display technique will eventually be used to visualize results of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) calculations on supercomputers.

“Blowing Snow” was exhibited as part of the Supercomputing ’93, Experiential Science in the CAVE Virtual Reality Theater venue.