Simulation of Natural Phenomena using the Examples of Snow, Avalanches and Wild Fires

This paper presents state-of-the-art approaches for the rendering and simulation of natural phenomena. In the first part, multiple approaches for the rendering of snow and their varying complexities are discussed. In particular, a particle-based and an occlusion-based method and their respective results are presented. In addition, the application of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) for snow rendering is discussed. Moreover, this paper presents an interactive approach on how the natural phenomena of snow avalanches can be simulated. 
The second part of this work discusses approaches in the area of wildfire simulation and presents the realistic results that can be achieved. Two wildfire models are presented which use detailed 3D geometry to model vegetation. The advancements of these models allow the simulation of wildfires in different biomes and at a large-scale.