Parallel Volume Rendering for Ocean Visualization in a Cluster of PCs

Volume rendering techniques can be very useful in geographical information systems to provide meaningful and visual information about the surface and the interior of 3D datasets. For ocean visualization, in particular, volume rendering techniques improve the analysis of the ocean inner structure, by generating visual information about, e.g., its temperature, salinity, velocity and mass. The rendering of huge datasets, however, is a computationally intensive task and, in order to achieve interactive visualization times, a high-performance computational system is fundamental. Although parallel machines have been successful in providing interactive times, most recent efforts have been directed towards a more cost-effective solution: implementing volume rendering algorithms on clusters of PCs. This platform has low-cost and can be easily upgraded. Parallel rendering applications, however, usually suffer from high load imbalance during the execution. In this paper, we propose a low-cost an...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: GEOINFO
• Authors: Alexandre Coelho, Marcio Nascimento, Cristiana Bentes, Maria Clicia Stelling de Castro, Ricardo C. Farias
• Keywords: GEOINFO 2004, GEOINFO 2007, Ocean Visualization, Volume Rendering, Volume Rendering Techniques