ABSTRACT
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.
