Visualization of very large oceanography time-varying volume datasets

This paper presents two visualization techniques suitable for huge oceanography time-varying volume datasets on high-performance graphics workstations. We first propose an off-line parallel rendering algorithm that merges volume ray-casting and on-the-fly isocontouring. This hybrid technique is quite effective in producing fly-through movies of high resolution. We also describe an interactive rendering algorithm that exploits multi-piped graphics hardware. Through this technique, it is possible to achieve interactive-time frame rates for huge time-varying volume data streams. While both techniques have been originally developed on an SGI visualization system, they can be also ported to commodity PC cluster environments with great ease.