Smokeview is a program that graphically displays fire and smoke propagation throughout a building given a set of parameters. These parameters range from the actual dimensions of the building structure to the dimensions of window and door openings. Additionally, input parameters that may be set include the type of materials that the structure is comprised of, whether the building has a sprinkler and/or ventilation system,and of course the area in which the initial combustion took place.
Smokeview, which is the graphical interface to the fire simulation data generation program Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS), was written by Glenn Forney, a physicist at NIST. Smokeview is written in low-level OpenGL code (C/C++), and was designed to run on desktop computers with multiple operating systems including Windows, Unix(SGI), and Linux.
All of the above described parameters are not input into the Smokeview program directly as it is solely a graphical interface, but are actually input into the FDS program. FDS solves a form of the Navier-Stokes equations that predict fluid flow--smoke and heat propagation throughout the specified environment. FDS is written in FORTRAN and creates data files (after quite a bit of time) that Smokeview reads and displays graphically.
The CAVE is an immersive environment that would provide an interesting perspective when running Smokeview. DIVERSE is the API being used to port Smokeview to the CAVE, and more specifically DGL, which is the OpenGL interface to DIVERSE. DIVERSE, and DGL will be described in greater detail under the Project section on the left side of the page.