GPU Accelerated Marine Data Visualization Method

• Published in: Journal of Ocean University of China Vol. 13; no. 6; pp. 964 - 970
• Main Authors: Li, Bo, Chen, Ge, Tian, Fenglin, Shao, Baomin, Ji, Pengbo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Heidelberg Science Press 01.12.2014; Springer Nature B.V; Department of Marine Technology, Ocean University of China, Engineering Research Center of Marine Information Technology, Ministry of Education, Qingdao 266100, P.R.China; Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy and Solar Environment, Institute of Space Sciences, Shandong University, Weihai 264209, P.R.China%Department of Marine Technology, Ocean University of China, Engineering Research Center of Marine Information Technology, Ministry of Education, Qingdao 266100, P.R.China%Institute of Oceanographic Instrumentation, Shandong Academy of Science, Qingdao 266001, P.R.China
• Subjects: Data analysis; Earth and Environmental Science; Earth Sciences; GPU; Meteorology; Oceanic analysis; Oceanography; Visualization; 三维虚拟现实; 光线投射; 可视化方法; 可视化模型; 多分辨率; 数据可视化; 海洋数据; INW, Donghai Sea; visualization techniques and methodologies; multiquadric method; marine data; line integral convolution; spherical ray casting; VV-Ocean
• ISSN: 1672-5182; 1993-5021; 1672-5174
• DOI: 10.1007/s11802-014-2304-3

The study of marine data visualization is of great value. Marine data, due to its large scale, random variation and multiresolution in nature, are hard to be visualized and analyzed. Nowadays, constructing an ocean model and visualizing model results have become some of the most important research topics of ＇Digital Ocean＇. In this paper, a spherical ray casting method is developed to improve the traditional ray-casting algorithm and to make efficient use of GPUs. Aiming at the ocean current data, a 3D view-dependent line integral convolution method is used, in which the spatial frequency is adapted according to the distance from a camera. The study is based on a 3D virtual reality and visualization engine, namely the VV-Ocean. Some interactive operations are also provided to highlight the interesting structures and the characteristics of volumetric data. Finally, the marine data gathered in the East China Sea are displayed and analyzed. The results show that the method meets the requirements of real-time and interactive rendering.