Real-time out-of-core visualization of particle traces

Visualization of particle traces provides intuitive and efficient means for the exploration and analysis of complex vector fields. This paper presents a method suitable for the real-time visualization of arbitrarily large time-varying vector fields in virtual environments. We describe an out-of-core scheme in which two distinct pre-processing and rendering components enable real-time data streaming and visualization. The presented approach yields low-latency application start-up times and small memory footprints. The described system was used to implement a "volumetric fog lance," which can emit up to 60000 particles into a flow field while maintaining an interactive frame rate of 60 frames per second. All algorithms were specifically designed to support commodity hardware. The proof-of-concept system is running on a low-cost Linux workstation equipped with a 120GB E-IDE RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive! Disk) system.