What is the difference between computer graphics and scientific visualization?

Question

Fill in the blank(s) with the appropriate word(s).

Answer 1

The term scientific visualization is often treated as synonymous with the related term computer graphics, but there is an important difference. The field of computer graphics is concerned with the technical issues involved in information display. That is, it deals with the actual algorithms for rendering a screen image—light sources, shadows, hidden lines and surfaces, shading, contours, and perspective. Scientific visualization, on the other hand, is concerned with how to display a large data set in a way that is most helpful to users and that maximizes its comprehension. It is concerned with issues such as data presentation, determining the optimal format for presenting data, data extraction, determining which values are important and should be included and which ones can safely be omitted, and data manipulation, converting the data to other forms or to different units that make the information easier to understand and interpret. Once we have decided exactly how we want to display the data, then a scientific visualization package typically uses a computer graphics package to render an image on the screen or the printer.