One of the perennial goals in computer graphics (CC) is realism in real time. Handling geometrically complex scenes and physically faithful descriptions of their appearance and behavior clashes with the requirement of multiple frame per second update rates. It is no surprise then that hierarchical modeling and simulation have already enjoyed a long history in CG. Most recently these ideas have received a significant boost as wavelet based algorithms have entered many areas in CG. We give an overview of some of the areas in which wavelets have already had an impact on the state of the art.