We illustrate how cogent visiometrics can provide peak insights that lead to pathways for discovery through computer simulation. This process includes visualizing, quantifying, and tracking evolving coherent structure morphologies. We use the vortex paradigm (Hawley & Zabusky 1989) to guide, interpret, and model phenomena arising in numerical simulations of accelerated inhomogeneous flows, e.g. Richtmyer-Meshkov shock-interface and shock-bubble environments and Rayleigh-Taylor environments. Much of this work is available on the Internet at the sites of my collaborators, A Kotelnikov, J Ray, and R Samtaney, at our Vizlab URL, http://vizlab.rutgers.edu/vizlab.html. The next "El Dorado" lies in the mathematical understanding of coherent structures in weakly dissipative fluids: the formation, evolution, and interaction of metastable, vortex-like solutions of nonlinear partial differential equations. By juxtaposing experimental results with computer simulations, I hope to focus on essential analytical directions.() 495 0066-4189/99/0115-0495$08.00 Annu. Rev. Fluid Mech. 1999.31:495-536. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org Access provided by University of Toronto Library on 11/19/14. For personal use only. 496 ZABUSKY