Interactive Visualization of Volumetric Vector Fields Using Texture Based Particles
Stefan Guthe, Stefan Gumhold, Wolfgang Strasser
WSI/GRIS University of Tuebingen
guthe@gris.uni-tuebingen.de
This paper introduces a new approach to the visualization of volumetric vector
fields with an adaptive distribution of animated particles that show properties
of the underlying steady flow. The shape of the particles illustrates the
direction of the vector field in a natural way. The particles are transported
along streamlines and their velocity reflects the local magnitude of the vector
field. Further physical quantities of the underlying flow can be mapped to the
emissive color, the transparency and the length of the particles. A major effort
has been made to achieve interactive frame rates for the animation of a large
number of particles while minimizing the error of the computed streamlines.
There are three main advantages of the new method. Firstly, the animation of the
particles diminishes the inherent occlusion problem of volumetric vector field
visualization, as the human eye can trace an animated particle even if it is
highly occluded. The second advantage is the variable resolution of the
visualization method. More particles are distributed in regions of interest. We
present a method to automatically adjust the resolution to features of the
vector field. Finally, our method is scalable to the computational and
rasterization power of the visualization system by simply adjusting the number
of visualized particles.