Interactive terrain rendering and volume visualization on the Princeton Engine

The implementation of truly interactive volume visualization and terrain rendering algorithms on the Princeton Engine (PE) video supercomputer is described. The PE is a single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) computer. Since it was originally developed as a real-time digital television system simulator, it possesses many of the attributes necessary for interactive visualization: high-resolution displays, high-bandwidth I/O, supercomputer class computational performance, and a local memory array large enough to store multiple Landsat scenes and data volumes. It is shown that it is possible to generate truly interactive terrain rendering and volume visualization by computing images in real-time, at multiple frames/second