Case study: Interactive rendering of adaptive mesh refinement data

Adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) is a popular computational simulation technique used in various scientific and engineering fields. Although AMR data is organized in a hierarchical multi-resolution data structure, the traditional volume visualization algorithms such as ray-casting and splatting cannot handle the form without converting it to a sophisticated data structure. In this paper, we present a hierarchical multi-resolution splatting technique using k-d trees and octrees for AMR data that is suitable for implementation on the latest consumer PC graphics hardware. We describe a graphical user interface to set transfer function and viewing/rendering parameters interactively. Experimental results obtained on a general purpose PC equipped with NVIDIA GeForce card are presented to demonstrate that the technique can interactively render AMR data (over 20 frames per second). Our scheme can easily be applied to parallel rendering of time-varying AMR data.