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 vol-umes
(1024x256x256 voxels, and 512x512x512 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.