The simulator was built first for the « Cité du Volcan », the museum of the Piton de la Fournaise on Réunion Island, near Madagascar — one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, and a fantastic place to build a first application.
Create eruptions and watch them evolve. Lapilli cones, hornitos and cracks can be dropped anywhere on the field, and everything reacts: the dynamic terrain and the fluid simulation let you divert flows, dig channels and reshape the ground as you go.
Change the eruptive parameters — flow rate, pressure, tilt, cycle, temperature — and run two eruptions side by side. After a few minutes the difference in the lava field and in the structures built is unmistakable.
In 2007 the Dolomieu crater collapsed under its own weight. Run hundreds of eruptions in fast motion and put back the 90 million cubic metres it lost — the counter on screen reads the volume the simulation has actually produced.
Choose where to build houses to minimise the damage from a future eruption, then set one off and find out whether you chose well. The most instructive playground of the four, and the one visitors argue about most.
Coverage of the installation on the museum’s website and in Réunion newspapers.
A year later the same simulation was fitted to an Oculus Rift, a few metres from an erupting cone.
