title: Progressive volume rendering of large unstructured grids.
abstract: We describe a new progressive technique that allows real-time rendering of extremely large tetrahedral meshes. Our approach uses a client-server architecture to incrementally stream portions of the mesh from a server to a client which refines the quality of the approximate rendering until it converges to a full quality rendering. The results of previous steps are re-used in each subsequent refinement, thus leading to an efficient rendering. Our novel approach keeps very little geometry on the client and works by refining a set of rendered images at each step. Our interactive representation of the dataset is efficient, light-weight, and high quality. We present a framework for the exploration of large datasets stored on a remote server with a thin client that is capable of rendering and managing full quality volume visualizations.
authors.affiliation: Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, University of Utah, USA. stevec@sci.utah.edu
authors.forename: Steven P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Callahan
authors.forename: Louis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bavoil
authors.forename: Valerio
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Pascucci
authors.forename: Cláudio T
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Silva
mesh_terms: D003196:Computer Graphics; D003205:Computing Methodologies; D003628:Database Management Systems; D016208:Databases, Factual; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000379:methods*; D014584:User-Computer Interface