VISUALIZATION: Effective Visualizations for Complex 3- and 4-Dimensional Flow Fields

尽管在过去的十年中可视化领域取得了许多进展，但有效和高效的三维流场表示仍然难以捉摸。许多技术显示出希望，但并不能代表流程的全貌。本项目包括系统调查现有技术及其优缺点，研究和分析相辅相成的组合技术，以及研究新技术。将进行认知分析和用户研究，以调查现有的研究。许多这些技术，包括pi的技术，都提出了一种表示或呈现流场的方法，很少对获得流场真正理解的局限性进行自我检查。这些技术中有几个有明显的局限性，但在缺乏任何好的三维流动可视化技术的情况下，这是一种改进。通过适当地结合几种技术，可以得到更多的改进。这些改进是否足够？哪些组合有效，哪些不有效？这些问题将在本研究中进行调查和量化。最后，我们会问：如何开发新技术来克服这些限制？我们对该领域的主观理解使我们能够提出几种调查途径。其中包括嵌入了流体微分器的各向同性体积渲染图；不透明和半透明流表面的示意图纹理算法；表示流程的细节级模型；底层特征的多分辨率表示；以及为流提供更有意义的上下文的新表示。这项研究将极大地帮助许多学科的计算科学家：计算流体动力学科学家、环境科学家、大气科学家、计算地质科学家和生物医学研究人员。他们研究的一个主要组成部分是对自然现象的调查或模拟。这种现象通常是动态的，导致复杂而有趣的流场。对于三维计算，缺乏有效的工具来理解、表示和传达这些流。这项研究将为该领域的研究提供坚实的基础，并导致新的算法提供更清晰的流表示。

Despite many advances in the visualization community over the past decade,effective and efficient representations for three-dimensional flow fields are still elusive.Many techniques show promise, but do not represent a complete picture ofthe flow.This project consists of a systematic investigation of the currenttechniques, their advantages and disadvantages, research and analysis of combined techniques which complement each other, and research into new techniques.Cognitive analysis and user studies will be undertaken to investigate existing research. Many of these techniques, including those of the PIs, proposed a method of representing or rendering a flowfield, with little selfexamination of the limitations towards garnering a true understanding of the flowfield.Several of these techniques have obvious limitations, but present an improvement overthe dearth of any good techniques for three-dimensional flow visualization. Bycombining several techniques appropriately, more improvements can bemade. Are these improvements sufficient? What combinations work and which ones do not?These questions will be investigated and quantified in this research.Finally, we will ask: How can new techniques be developed that will overcome some of theselimitations?Our subjective understanding of the field allows us to propose severalavenues of investigation. These include an-isotropic volume renderings, embeddedwith flow differentiators; schematic texture algorithms for opaque and semi-transparent streamsurfaces; level-of-detail models for representing the flow; multi-resolution representationof underlying features; and new representations that provide a more meaningful contextfor the flow.This research will greatly aid computational scientists across many disciplines: computational fluid dynamics scientists, environment scientists, atmospheric scientists, computational geological scientists and biomedical researchers.A primary component of their research is the investigation or simulation of natural phenomena.This phenomena is generally dynamic, leading to complex and interesting flow fields. Forthree-dimensional computations, effective tools to understand, represent and convey theseflows are lacking. This research will provide a firm foundation for research in this area, as well as lead to new algorithms offering a much clearer representation for flows.