  The influence of realistic interactions on the reaction dynamics in
intermediate energy heavy ion collisions is investigated. The mean field in
relativistic transport calculations is derived from microscopic Dirac-Brueckner
(DB) self-energies, taking non-equilibrium effects, in particular the
anisotropy of the local phase space configurations, into account. Thus this
approach goes beyond the local density approximation. A detailed analysis of
various in-plane and out-of-plane flow observables is presented for Au on Au
reactions at incident energies ranging from 250 to 800 A.MeV and the results
are compared to recent measurements of the FOPI collaboration. An overall good
agreement with in-plane flow data and a reasonable description of the
out-of-plane emission is achieved. For these results the intrinsic momentum
dependence of the non-equilibrium mean fields is important. On the other hand,
the local density approximation with the same underlying DB forces as well as a
standard non-linear version of the $\sigma\omega$ model are less successful in
describing the present data. This gives evidence of the applicability of self
energies derived from the DB approach to nuclear matter also far from
saturation and equilibrium.
