Aryaman Gupta, Pietro Incardona, Anton Brock, our VISUS researcher(s) Guido Reina and Steffen Frey (former VISUS Post-Doc, now Ass. Prof. at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands), Stefan Gumold, Ulrik Günther, and Ivo F. Sbalzarini received the Best Paper Award for their Publication "Parallel Compositing of Volumetric Depth Images for Interactive Visualization of Distributed Volumes at High Frame Rates" at this year's Eurographics Symposium on Parallel Graphics and Visualization (EGPGV). Congratulations! This year, the EGPGV 2023 took place on 12 June 2023 in Leipzig, in the framework of the EuroVis.
Abstract
We present a parallel compositing algorithm for Volumetric Depth Images (VDIs) of large three-dimensional volume data. Large distributed volume data are routinely produced in both numerical simulations and experiments, yet it remains challenging to visualize them at smooth, interactive frame rates. VDIs are view-dependent piecewise constant representations of volume data that offer a potential solution. They are more compact and less expensive to render than the original data. So far, however, there is no method for generating VDIs from distributed data. We propose an algorithm that enables this by sort-last parallel generation and compositing of VDIs with automatically chosen content-adaptive parameters. The resulting composited VDI can then be streamed for remote display, providing responsive visualization of large, distributed volume data.
