An investigation of Fourier domain fluid simulation

Motivated by the reduced rendering cost of the Fourier Volume Rendering method, we construct a Navier-Stokes fluid flow simulation that operates entirely in the frequency domain. We show results from a practical implementation and compare with Jos Stam's spatial domain and FFT-based simulations.;We conclude that frequency domain implementation of the Navier-Stokes flow equations for Euler modeling schemes is prohibitively expensive in terms of compute time. We also conclude that of the solutions we evaluated, Stam's semi-Lagrangian simulation pipelines are the best choices for real-time applications such as video games, where perfect physical accuracy is not required.;We break down the simulation pipeline into its major components and evaluate the cost of each component in the spatial domain and the frequency domain. We present an analytical as well as an experimental analysis, and we use our experimental results to identify the most efficient simulation pipelines for all grid sizes.