Quantitative atmospheric rendering for real-time infrared scene simulation

The radiation transfer of the Earth?s atmosphere is a complex progress, which involves electromagnetic propagation, thermodynamics, and molecular spectroscopy. Atmospheric effects on an infrared scene were presented as transmission, absorption, and scattering. Atmospheric rendering thus aims to visually display these effects of the radiation through the Earth?s atmosphere. In this paper, a quantitative atmospheric rendering method was proposed for real-time infrared scene simulation. By counting the selective absorption of water, carbon dioxide, and ozone on an infrared spectrum, transmittance was calculated using Lambert?Beer?s law, the steady-state path radiation was precomputed according to Kirchhoff?s law, and the Rayleigh and Mie scattering effects were calculated with GPU when an infrared scene was rendered in real-time. Simulations were conducted to verify the performance of the proposed method by comparing our results with those obtained from the MODTRAN program.