Relativistic Effects for Time‐Resolved Light Transport

We present a real‐time framework which allows interactive visualization of relativistic effects for time‐resolved light transport. We leverage data from two different sources: real‐world data acquired with an effective exposure time of less than 2 picoseconds, using an ultra‐fast imaging technique termed femto‐photography, and a transient renderer based on ray‐tracing. We explore the effects of time dilation, light aberration, frequency shift and radiance accumulation by modifying existing models of these relativistic effects to take into account the time‐resolved nature of light propagation. Unlike previous works, we do not impose limiting constraints in the visualization, allowing the virtual camera to explore freely a reconstructed 3D scene depicting dynamic illumination. Moreover, we consider not only linear motion, but also acceleration and rotation of the camera. We further introduce, for the first time, a pinhole camera model into our relativistic rendering framework, and account for subsequent changes in focal length and field of view as the camera moves through the scene.     

Molecular dynamics simulation of a relativistic gas: Thermostatistical properties

Studying special relativistic generalizations of classical thermodynamic systems have recently attracted much attention despite its long and controversial history. Here, we propose a relativistic model of a realistic dilute gas which can easily be studied using standard molecular dynamics simulations. We briefly outline some of its thermostatistical properties which help resolve controversial issues in relativistic thermodynamics. In particular, we find that Jüttner function is the correct generalization of Maxwell–Boltzmann velocity distribution. We also conclude that relativistic temperature is best understood as a rest-frame-property, invariant under various relativistic transformations, i.e. Lorentz transformation and time reparametrization. Finally, we provide canonical non-equilibrium simulations of such systems and study the effects of a temperature gradient imposed by heat reservoirs.     

The same origin ray set query for realistic illumination: Algorithm and analysis

The same origin ray set (SORS) is a computational primitive which can be used by ray tracing, radiosity and multiple pass illumination simulation algorithms for realistic image synthesis. A SORS consists of a set of rays emanating from the same point in space. The SORS query computes the first object intersected by each ray and the intersection point. In this paper we present an efficient projection algorithm for computing a SORS query for polygonal scenes. The algorithm achieves its efficiency by separating ray-polygon intersection detection from the computation of the intersection point between the ray and the polygon's plane. The algorithm can be integrated with all current illumination acceleration schemes. We analyse the projection algorithm and compare it to the alternative of computing the SORS query one ray at a time. The analysis' results are expressed in terms of a few intuitive parameters, measuring the success of the acceleration scheme in culling irrelevant objects and the concentration of the ray set. The projection algorithm can be up to five times more efficient, depending on these parameters and the quality of the image. The relative advantage of the projection increases with image quality.     

Shallow Bounding Volume Hierarchies for Fast SIMD Ray Tracing of Incoherent Rays

Photorealistic image synthesis is a computationally demanding task that relies on ray tracing for the evaluation of integrals. Rendering time is dominated by tracing long paths that are very incoherent by construction. We therefore investigate the use of SIMD instructions to accelerate incoherent rays. SIMD is used in the hierarchy construction, the tree traversal and the leaf intersection. This is achieved by increasing the arity of acceleration structures, which also reduces memory requirements. We show that the resulting hierarchies can be built quickly and are smaller than acceleration structures known so far while at the same time outperforming them for incoherent rays. Our new acceleration structure speeds up ray tracing by a factor of 1.6 to 2.0 compared to a highly optimized bounding interval hierarchy implementation, and 1.3 to 1.6 compared to an efficient kd‐tree. At the same time, the memory requirements are reduced by 10–50%. Additionally we show how a caching mechanism in conjunction with this memory efficient hierarchy can be used to speed up shadow rays in a global illumination algorithm without increasing the memory footprint. This optimization decreased the number of traversal steps up to 50%.     

Explanatory and illustrative visualization of special and general relativity

This paper describes methods for explanatory and illustrative visualizations used to communicate aspects of Einstein's theories of special and general relativity, their geometric structure, and of the related fields of cosmology and astrophysics. Our illustrations target a general audience of laypersons interested in relativity. We discuss visualization strategies, motivated by physics education and the didactics of mathematics, and describe what kind of visualization methods have proven to be useful for different types of media, such as still images in popular science magazines, film contributions to TV shows, oral presentations, or interactive museum installations. Our primary approach is to adopt an egocentric point of view: the recipients of a visualization participate in a visually enriched thought experiment that allows them to experience or explore a relativistic scenario. In addition, we often combine egocentric visualizations with more abstract illustrations based on an outside view in order to provide several presentations of the same phenomenon. Although our visualization tools often build upon existing methods and implementations, the underlying techniques have been improved by several novel technical contributions like image-based special relativistic rendering on GPUs, special relativistic 4D ray tracing for accelerating scene objects, an extension of general relativistic ray tracing to manifolds described by multiple charts, GPU-based interactive visualization of gravitational light deflection, as well as planetary terrain rendering. The usefulness and effectiveness of our visualizations are demonstrated by reporting on experiences with, and feedback from, recipients of visualizations and collaborators.     

What Is the Set of Images of an Object Under All Possible Illumination Conditions?

The appearance of an object depends on both the viewpoint from which it is observed and the light sources by which it is illuminated. If the appearance of two objects is never identical for any pose or lighting conditions, then–in theory–the objects can always be distinguished or recognized. The question arises: What is the set of images of an object under all lighting conditions and pose? In this paper, we consider only the set of images of an object under variable illumination, including multiple, extended light sources and shadows. We prove that the set of n-pixel images of a convex object with a Lambertian reflectance function, illuminated by an arbitrary number of point light sources at infinity, forms a convex polyhedral cone in IRⁿ and that the dimension of this illumination cone equals the number of distinct surface normals. Furthermore, the illumination cone can be constructed from as few as three images. In addition, the set of n-pixel images of an object of any shape and with a more general reflectance function, seen under all possible illumination conditions, still forms a convex cone in IRⁿ. Extensions of these results to color images are presented. These results immediately suggest certain approaches to object recognition. Throughout, we present results demonstrating the illumination cone representation.

     

CAD模型转换到VR模型的实时可视性研究

实时3D 可视化是机械产品设计当中的一个主要问题,针对CAD几何学和装配以及机械产品的高可视化提出了MEMPHIS中间件框架,目的是连接实时虚拟现实应用,特别是CAD模型的管理操作设计。同时还保证了当进行模型转换时,在CAD模型上必须作相应的几何改变,系统会同步变化,这样避免了传统的从CAD模型转换到VR模型转换时人工加入虚拟现实特殊信息,如光照设置、材质、纹理、行为这些刻画VR模型可视化特性的信息属性后才能实现这种转换。从而大大提高了机械产品协同设计的效率和可视性性能。     

Interactive Visualization with Programmable Graphics Hardware

One of the main scientific goals of visualization is the development of algorithms and appropriate data models which facilitate interactive visual analysis and direct manipulation of the increasingly large data sets which result from simulations running on massive parallel computer systems, from measurements employing fast high‐resolution sensors, or from large databases and hierarchical information spaces. This task can only be achieved with the optimization of all stages of the visualization pipeline: filtering, compression, and feature extraction of the raw data sets, adaptive visualization mappings which allow the users to choose between speed and accuracy, and exploiting new graphics hardware features for fast and high‐quality rendering. The recent introduction of advanced programmability in widely available graphics hardware has already led to impressive progress in the area of volume visualization. However, besides the acceleration of the final rendering, flexible graphics hardware is increasingly being used also for the mapping and filtering stages of the visualization pipeline, thus giving rise to new levels of interactivity in visualization applications. The talk will present recent results of applying programmable graphics hardware in various visualization algorithms covering volume data, flow data, terrains, NPR rendering, and distributed and remote applications.     

Behavior-Preserving Simulation-to-Animation Model and Rule Transformations

In the framework of graph transformation, simulation rules define the operational behavior of visual models. Moreover, it has been shown already how to construct animation rules from simulation rules by so-called S2A-transformation. In contrast to simulation rules, animation rules use symbols representing entities from the application domain in a user-oriented visualization. Using animation views for model execution provides better insights of model behavior to users, leading to an earlier detection of model inconsistencies. Hence, an important requirement of the animation view construction is the preservation of the behavior of the original visual model. This means, we have to show on the one hand semantical correctness of the S2A-transformation, and, on the other hand, semantical correctness of a suitable backwards-transformation A2S. Semantical correctness of a model and rule transformation means that for each sequence of the source system we find a corresponding sequence in the target system. S2A-transformation has been considered in our contribution to GraMoT 2006. In this paper, we give a precise definition for animation-to-simulation (A2S) backward transformation, and show under which conditions semantical correctness of an A2S backward transformation can be obtained. The main result states the conditions for S2A-transformations to be behavior-preserving. The result is applied to analyze the behavior of a Radio Clock model's S2A-transformation.     

Quantizing Intersections Using Compact Voxels

Efficient intersection queries are important for ray tracing. However, building and maintaining the acceleration structures is demanding, especially for fully dynamic scenes. In this paper, we propose a quantized intersection framework based on compact voxels to quantize the intersection as an approximation. With high‐resolution voxels, the scene geometry can be well represented, which enables more accurate simulation of global illumination, such as detailed glossy reflections. In terms of memory usage in our graphics processing unit implementation, voxels are binarized and compactly encoded in a few 2D textures. We evaluate the rendering quality at various voxel resolutions. Empirically, high‐fidelity rendering can be achieved at the voxel resolution of 1 K³ or above, which produces images very similar to those of ray tracing. Moreover, we demonstrate the feasibility of our framework for various illumination effects with several applications, including first‐bounce indirect illumination, glossy refraction, path tracing, direct illumination, and ambient occlusion.     

The Gödel Engine - An interactive approach to visualization in general relativity

We present a methodical new approach to visualize the aspects of general relativity from a self-centered perspective. We focus on the visualization of the Gödel universe, which is an exact solution to Einstein's field equations of general relativity. This model provides astounding features such as the existence of an optical horizon and the possibility of time travel. Although we know that our universe is not of Gödel type, we can – using this solution to Einstein's equations – visualize and understand the effects resulting from the theory of relativity, which itself has been verified on the large scale in numerous experiments over the last century. We derive the analytical solution to the geodesic equations of Gödel's universe for special initial conditions. Along with programmable graphics hardware we achieve a tremendous speedup for the visualization of general relativity. This enables us to interactively explore the physical aspects and optical effects of Gödel's universe. We also demonstrate how the analytical solution enables dynamic lighting with local illumination models. Our implementation is tailored for Gödel's universe and five orders of magnitude faster than previous approaches. It can be adapted to manifolds for which an analytical expression of the propagation of light is available.     

Topology‐based Visualization of Transformation Pathways in Complex Chemical Systems

Studying transformation in a chemical system by considering its energy as a function of coordinates of the system's components provides insight and changes our understanding of this process. Currently, a lack of effective visualization techniques for high‐dimensional energy functions limits chemists to plot energy with respect to one or two coordinates at a time. In some complex systems, developing a comprehensive understanding requires new visualization techniques that show relationships between all coordinates at the same time. We propose a new visualization technique that combines concepts from topological analysis, multi‐dimensional scaling, and graph layout to enable the analysis of energy functions for a wide range of molecular structures. We demonstrate our technique by studying the energy function of a dimer of formic and acetic acids and a LTA zeolite structure, in which we consider diffusion of methane.     

Quantifying entanglement of two relativistic particles using optimal entanglement witness

In a recent paper, it was shown that the projections of a relativistic spin operator (RSO) massive spin- \frac12{\frac{1}{2}} particle on a world-vector which can be in timelike or null tetrad direction are proportional to the helicity or Bargman-Wigner (BW) qubit, respectively. Here we consider Lorentz transformations of two-particle states, which have been constructed both in helicity basis. For convenience, instead of using the superposition of momenta we use only two momentum eigenstates (p ₁ and p ₂) for each particle. Consequently, in 2D momentum subspace we describe the structure of one particle in terms of the four-qubit system. We present a new approach to quantification of relativistic entanglement based on entanglement witness (EW), which is obtained by a new method of convex optimization. In addition, Lorentz invariance of entanglement using BW qubit is also studied.     

A Survey of Flattening‐Based Medical Visualization Techniques

In many areas of medicine, visualization research can help with task simplification, abstraction or complexity reduction. A common visualization approach is to facilitate parameterization techniques which flatten a usually 3D object into a 2D plane. Within this state of the art report (STAR), we review such techniques used in medical visualization and investigate how they can be classified with respect to the handled data and the underlying tasks. Many of these techniques are inspired by mesh parameterization algorithms which help to project a triangulation in ?³ to a simpler domain in ?². It is often claimed that this makes complex structures easier to understand and compare by humans and machines. Within this STAR we review such flattening techniques which have been developed for the analysis of the following medical entities: the circulation system, the colon, the brain, tumors, and bones. For each of these five application scenarios, we have analyzed the tasks and requirements, and classified the reviewed techniques with respect to a developed coding system. Furthermore, we present guidelines for the future development of flattening techniques in these areas.