Talk:Scientific visualization: Difference between revisions

This page desperately needs expanding. It's a very brief description of scientific visualization, and doesn't even describe simulation, a source of a tremendous about of data for sci vis. Things like the ASC project's ASCI White or ASC BlueGene/L should probably be mentioned.

Another thing that would greatly help this page are pictures of scientific visualizations. Considering its graphic nature, scientific visualization can best be understood by pictures. User:24.5.239.114

Fully agreed, and not only does this page need work, the various pages that link here need to be written too, like Information Visualization, etc. The discussion on this page shows how badly needed this page really is. Simulation is a separate topic though, and should have its own page. --Robert Kosara 02:48, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Sorry, but this term is almost Absolute nonsense, with such logic we can produce term (and article, of course!) Laboratory visualization. I recommend to merge this article with main article Information visualization --AndriuZ 06:14, July 11, 2005 (UTC)

If you Google the term and look a the pages at Colleges and universities you will see that it is a fairly widespread academic pursuit, and that there are also vendors offering off-the-shelf or customized software for this. If you look at online catalogs such as the Library of Congress you will find several books on the topic. --AlainV 23:45, 11 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Even though the distinction between scientific visulization and information visualization is not clear, information visualization is somewhat different, and merging them toghether might confuse some novice researchers and students. --[some anonymous user]

• Anyone who thinks "scientific visualization" is "almost absolute nonsense" must be someone who has not attended years of "Vis 199x" and "Vis 200x" conferences, which make it very clear that the term has a large class of visualization projects that it refers to.Daqu 23:29, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Knowledge visualization seems to be just a new phrase for scientific/information visualization. --Ronz 04:18, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No, it isn't. Scientific visualization typically involves the visualization of numeric data but knowledge visualization is intended to capture the idea of the visualisation of symbolic data, either of the relational database sort or more expansively the representation of symbolic logic itself. Peter Eklund, 22 Sept, 2006.

• Scientific visualization is an umbrella term that should include information visualization as a subcategory, though a very large subcategory that may even comprise about half of scientific visualization. "Information" implies that the raw data to be visualized is expressed in a formal manner, often corresponding to some type -- or combination of types -- of computer-science data structures. (One example of sci-vis that is probably better off not being called info-vis is the visualization of air flow, given a velocity vector field of this flow.)

• • Generally, visualization is the umbrella term, which contains scientific visualization and information visualization. Scientific vis is futher decomposed into volume and flow visualization. Each of these have a vast body of literature and need their own pages. The new field of visual analytics also needs to be described and put into context (it could eventually become the new umbrella term). --Robert Kosara 02:48, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• "Knowledge visualization" strikes me as a term whose meaning is still in the formative stages, and so perhaps it would be premature to say where this "ought" to go in any taxonomy of visualization types.Daqu 23:29, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

• Ronz - I totally disagree with you. Knowledge Visualization is not a new phrase for Scientific Visualization or even Information Visualization, it's indeed a different area of practice, study and research. Independently of defining the exact taxonomy of Visualization, which I acknowledge is not an easy task, we should nonetheless differentiate areas of study that are distinct. Just because there are several overlaps between Data Visualization, Information Visualization, Knowledge Visualization and Scientific Visualization doesn't mean we should choose one (in this case - Scientific Visualization) to be the all encompassing concept in this field.Mslima

I went ahead and removed all researchers that didnt have an article. --Ronz 15:48, 22 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was referred here from a search for visual analytics, which was merged with scientific visualization.I will argue that this is a poor decision for two reasons:

1) This does not reflect the current state of affairs-- the IEEE has an annual Symposium in visual analytics ( http://conferences.computer.org/vast/vast2006/ ) , there is a US Gov. National Visualization and Analytics centre ( http://nvac.pnl.gov/ ) and 5 regional centres that do visual analytics, there is even a national research agenda funded by Gov in visual analytics etc. While some people argue that these fields should not be considered as independent, Wikipedia should reflect the current state of affairs.

2) By definition-- Visual Analytics was to my knowledge first defined in the research agenda document. That definition is " Visual Analytics is the science of analytical reasoning supported by the highly interactive visual interface". Emphasis here is on the reasoning aspect of interaction with visual interfaces. This differs subtantially from the emphasis of Infovis and scivis.

Brian