A Texture-Based Hardware-Independent Technique for Time-Varying Volume Flow Visualization

  • Authors:
  • Zhanping Liu;Robert J. Moorhead, II

  • Affiliations:
  • ERC/GeoResources Institute, P. O. Box 9627, Mississippi State University, MS 39762-9627, USA;ERC/GeoResources Institute, P. O. Box 9627, Mississippi State University, MS 39762-9627, USA

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Visualization
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Existing texture-based 3D flow visualization techniques, e.g., volume Line Integral Convolution (LIC), are either limited to steady flows or dependent on special-purpose graphics cards. In this paper we present a texture-based hardware-independent technique for time-varying volume flow visualization. It is based on our Accelerated Unsteady Flow LIC (AUFLIC) algorithm (Liu and Moorhead, 2005), which uses a flow-driven seeding strategy and a dynamic seeding controller to reuse pathlines in the value scattering process to achieve fast time-dependent flow visualization with high temporal-spatial coherence. We extend AUFLIC to 3D scenarios for accelerated generation of volume flow textures. To address occlusion, lack of depth cuing, and poor perception of flow directions within a dense volume, we employ magnitude-based transfer functions and cutting planes in volume rendering to clearly show the flow structure and the flow evolution.