Experiential Climate Simulation Demo: Clouds

2015

My second project at the media research lab I worked at in college involved creating systems for experiential science. In particular, these systems would model weather physics that interacted with people's motion on a stage. I contributed a basic system for phase change to a pre-existing particle system the lab used, but my main work was a system for interactive clouds. The software I created used a GPU based Navier-Stokes fluid pressure solver to calculate the movement of the clouds and then rendered them onto the floor using a projector. People on the floor, acting as low pressure on the planet's surface, could form clouds by hovering over bodies of liquid. Different environments and scenarios could be loaded into the system in real time. This research software was created in Max/MSP.

Credit: Port of Navier-Stokes simulation to Max 7 done by Todd Ingalls.