Scientific visualization — past, present and future

This paper presents a general overview of scientific visualization from a historical orientation. It looks first at visualization before the advent of computers, and then goes on to describe the development of early visualization tools in the ‘computer age’. There was a surge of interest in visualization in the latter part of the 1980s, following the publication of an NSF report. This sparked the development of a number of major visualization software systems such as AVS and IRIS Explorer. These are described, and the paper concludes with a look at future developments.