Modern Scientific Visualization is More than Just Pretty Pictures

While the primary product of scientific visualization is images and movies, its primary objective is really scientific insight. Too often, the focus of visualization research is oil the product, riot the mission. This paper presents two case studies, both that appear in previous publications, that focus oil using visualization technology to produce insight. The first applies "Query-Driven Visualization" concepts to laser wakefield Simulation data to help identify and analyze tire process of beam formation. The second uses topological analysis to provide a quantitative basis for (i) understanding the mixing process in hydrodynamic simulations, and (ii) performing comparative analysis of data from two different types of simulations that model hydrodynamic instability.