<p>Using a real-time system for simulating airflow from air conditioners and temperature change, three distinct visualization techniques are evaluated in an augmented reality setting: stream surfaces integrated with streamlines, particles, and dynamic temperature field. The first technique depicts the continuous flow direction as if the flow is time-invariant; the second technique presents the movement of discretized samples of time-varying flow; the third technique visualizes the airflow indirectly by presenting the temperature field that changes dynamically over time. The techniques are significantly different from each other but are all suitable for visualizing rapidly changing airflow of air conditioners. In the user study conducted with 37 participants, the tasks are to control the airflow directions in order to drop the temperatures of the entire room and a target workspace as quickly as possible. The experiment results show that the stream surfaces integrated with streamlines reduce the user’s efforts most effectively. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first report on evaluating distinct techniques for visualizing real-time airflow in augmented reality.</p> Graphical abstract <p></p>