During the past several decades interdisciplinary work involving aerospace engineering, chemistry, and materials science has led to revolutionary new methods for flow visualization on aerodynamic surfaces. The methods that have been developed utilize luminescent materials and compounds that are dissolved or dispersed into binders. The luminescence from the coating responds to the environment, resulting in changes in the spectral properties, luminescence decay time, and/or luminescence quantum yield. These changes in luminescence can be imaged using high-resolution and large dynamic range (large bit depth) CCD imagers, giving rise to high-fidelity images of aerodynamic flow characteristics and pressure distributions on aerodynamic objects. This talk will overview the methods that rely on pressure-sensitive coatings, which operate by oxygen quenching of luminescence intensity and lifetime, and temperature-sensitive coatings, which can resolve differences in surface temperature resulting from differences in flow characteristics. The fundamental photochemistry and polymer science underlying the operation of these coatings is described.