Abstract: The simulation of natural phenomena attracts a spurt of research attention and interest in computer graphics and virtual reality domain. The modeling and simulation for liquid, which is one of the most common nature phenomena, has extraordinary value in many applications like game, medical use, movies, etc. As traditional liquid modeling method, physics-based approaches suffer from the high computational complexity. Following the development of visual acquisition equipments like high-resolution digital cameras, liquid modeling method based on acquisition data has become another active research topic in virtual reality community. With this method, more realistic phenomena can be generated with technologies in computer graphics and computer vision. In addition, the visual features and rich details are preserved while the computational complexity can be significantly reduced. However, the time-varying modeling for liquid dynamics through acquisition methods is still faced with many challenges. Current research and development progress of liquid visual acquisition and simulation in recent years are reviewed and introduced. The main methods adopted in this research area are analyzed and summarized. Finally, challenges and future development trend in this domain will be proposed.