Software components will be demonstrated in the context of an application demonstrator for the interactive design and engineering of car bodies for both aesthetic and physical design decisions. This demonstrator will be evaluated in collaboration with BMW AG, the industrial end-user involved in the project.

Major results will be achieved in the course of the project:

definition of a very general data exchange format for visualisation to unify all aspects of visualisation required to meet industrial and scientific needs
development of a general purpose, high image quality rendering software for distributed memory parallel systems for animation and visualisation using a novel ray-tracing acceleration algorithm
development of interfaces to allow for the integration of software developed outside the project for the simulation of external aerodynamics
development of a prototype graphical interactive designer's front-end software including a novel constraint-based free form surface modelling system.

The implementation aims at the widest possible portability of the software to both distributed memory parallel machines as well as to shared memory parallel machines and networks of workstations. The software is based on message passing, using a particular message passing interface defined in the project.