Real-time visualization of smoke for fire safety engineering applications

Visibility in smoke is a key aspect in terms of safe egress in various fire related situations. Due to the hazardous nature of fire induced smoke, it is hard to study human behaviour under such conditions, but recent development within the field of virtual reality (VR) has enabled exposure to many different hazardous conditions while remaining relatively safe. However, to obtain valid results from such studies a higher degree of visual realism is often required, therefore when studying effects of visibility, the rendering of smoke needs to be physically based and of high visual fidelity while still being computationally cheap in order to render the virtual environment at high framerates. This paper presents an approach for rendering smoke with a single in-scattering term which allows for smoke and light interaction over multiple wavelengths. The results highlight the importance of smoke characteristics as well as the influence the general lighting conditions can have on perceived visibility. The presented work intends to be of benefit for VR or similar applications where visibility is of key interest.