Convergence between integrative simulation and computer graphics

Convergence between integrative simulation and computer graphicsIn 1985, after an almost five-year break while development lay dormant, an encounter with computer graphics, in the person of Jean Françon from the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg, helped to spectacularly kick-start the research into universal architectural simulation at what was now known as CIRAD.1 This convergence may ultimately have been somewhat premature, but, besides the software products that soon stemmed from it, CIRAD also quickly realized the various advantages to be gained in keeping and enhancing this less directly applicable research within their organization. As we shall see, however, the determination to make simulation conform to botanical reality never wavered; indeed, it was this demand for physiological realism that, in turn, stimulated further developments in computing and botany (e.g., software with parallel processing of buds). In this context, the issue of how to validate these simulations that were becoming considerably more complex therefore became a major technological and epistemological concern. Philippe de Reffye responded that his visualization software had not been conceived specifically to compete with the solutions of computer graphics specialists, and that visual simulation served above all to prove to botanists and agronomists the validity of the underlying computer model. The first commercial version of the software did not yet offer resemblance of dynamic simulation. The simulation time was a virtual time that was distinct from real time, not only because it had a different rhythmic relationship but also because we can choose to "stop" it in order to carry out parallel tasks. To Jean Francon's mind, at that time, computer science was an entirely separate science that, as such, required mathematics but should not be confused with it. In 1980, he was appointed as Professor of Computer Science at the University of Haute Alsace in Mulhouse, and then in 1985 at the Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg, where he primarily taught computer graphics.