Scalable Interactive Volume Rendering Using Off-the-Shelf Components
Abstract
This paper describes an application of a second generation implementation of the Sepia architecture (Sepia-2) to interactive volumetric visualization of large rectilinear scalar fields. By employing pipelined associative blending operators in a sort-last configuration a demonstration system with 8 rendering computers sustains 24 to 28 frames per second while interactively rendering large data volumes (1024x256x256 voxels, and 12x512x512 voxels). We believe interactive performance at these frame rates and data sizes is unprecedented. We also believe these results can be extended to other types of structured and unstructured grids and a variety of GL rendering techniques including surface rendering and shadow mapping. We show how to extend our single-stage crossbar demonstration system to multi-stage networks in order to support much larger data sizes and higher image resolutions. This requires solving a dynamic mapping problem for a class of blending operators that includes Porter-Duff compositing operators.
Additional Information
© 2001 IEEE. We are indebted to Glenn Lupton and Jack Alexander of Compaq's visualization group for assistance with performance analysis and debugging of the application software. John McCorquodale prepared the data for the Visible Human in figure 5. Brian von Herzen contributed to a discussion of image space scaling. Hugh Lauer, Andy Vesper, and Larry Seiler of RTViz have been helpful in understanding details of the VolumePro system. This work was supported by National Science Foundation grants ACI-9982273 and EIA-0079871, by the U.S. Department of Energy's ASCI Center for Simulation of Dynamic Response of Materials, by Caltech's Center for Advanced Computing Research, and by Compaq Computer Corporation's Enterprise Systems Laboratories and Systems Research Center.Attached Files
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 72355
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20161128-173326648
- ACI-9982273
- NSF
- EIA-0079871
- NSF
- Department of Energy (DOE)
- Caltech Center for Advanced Computing Research
- Compaq Computer Corporation
- Created
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2016-11-29Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-10-23Created from EPrint's last_modified field