A multilayered image cache for scientific visualization

We introduce a multilayered image cache system that is designed to work with a pool of rendering engines to facilitate a frame-less, asynchronous rendering environment for scientific visualization. Our system decouples the rendering from the display of imagery at many levels; it decouples render frequency and resolution from display frequency and resolution; allows asynchronous transmission of imagery instead of the compute-send cycle of standard parallel systems; and allows local, incremental refinement of imagery without requiring all imagery to be rerendered. Interactivity is accomplished by maintaining a set of image tiles for display while the production of imagery is performed by a pool of processors. The image tiles are placed in fixed places in camera (vs. world) space to eliminate occlusion artifacts. Display quality is improved by increasing the number of image tiles and imagery is refreshed more frequently by decreasing the number of image tiles.