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  {\bf Abstract}
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The use of virtual reality (VR) to visualize scientific phenomena is a quite common and useful application.
Virtual reality allows scientists to immerse themselves in the phenomena that they are studying.
One such phenomenon currently under study is the dust kicked up by a helicopter's down-draft.
This phenomenon is being studied because of the difficulty of landing a helicopter in a desert environment.
Such a terrain would have large amount of loose sand that can easily be kicked up by a helicopter and interfere with the normal operation of a helicopter.
In order to study such a phenomenon, an application will need to employ a particle system designed to create such visual effects.
A particle system that creates such effects would need to be able to handle the updating and rendering of large amounts of particles.
These particles need to follow a well defined scientific model during the course of their life time.
Also such a particle system would need to be aware of multiple contexts, considering the virtual reality environment in which it would be used in.
Sandstorm is a dynamic multi-contextual GPU-based particle system that uses vector fields for particle propagation, is presented in this Thesis.
