Changes in the scene (light sources, geometry, daytime …) lead to an immediate need for a recalculation of the illumination result. By using an iteratively improving approach on modern GPU hardware, which converges to the physically correct solution after several hundred frames, scene interactions are still made possible during these costly computations – even in cases of a large number of physically complex light sources.

The developed system will make it possible to visualize the simulation results on both regular monitors as well as on 3D stereo setups with multiple screens, providing an immersive impression of the illuminated buildings. By applying an interactive graphical user interface, it will be both possible to modify light source settings (like position, type, color and intensity) and scene geometry attributes (like textures or object positions/orientation), offering on-the-fly changes in scene and light simulation configuration.

Recent result screenshots (April/May 2011):

First color bleeding effects in the current version of the HILITE application

The Museum Scene rendered using the current state of the HILITE application in ~10 seconds.

Illuminated Easter Bunny sitting in a virtual model of the "Hofburg Festsaal"

Mission: To support time-critical decision making using visual simulation control.

Fluid simulation tools are capable of predicting natural processes and can be employed for the assistance in the human decision making process. Existing solutions lack a number of important features needed for a feasible support system. Very important is the usability of the simulation tools by people without special fluid simulation expertise. Moreover, with the capabilities of graphics hardware clusters, everybody will have access to affordable supercomputing power on their desktop. Until now, little work has been done to use this power for knowledge generation via simulation steering. In this project we develop a novel computational steering system that uses visualization in every aspect of the problem solving and provides effective feedback via an intuitive interface.

Among the application areas of the system we consider the industrial design of components where rapid prototyping is required. Using a fast and intuitive system will help to evaluate whether a certain concept is promising during the design phase. Another important application is the assistance in emergency situations that are caused by natural disasters such as floods, where safety and damage limitation depend on fast decisions. The system can be used to test actions to be taken during a flood event . Users interact with sketch-based steering monitors to quickly plan and design a breach closure, to name an example. The gained knowledge supports the creation of flood management plans. Finally, our vision is that, even under time-critical circumstances, emergency personnel on-site will be able to analyze the imminent situation quickly to choose the best response strategy.

World Lines are introduced as an intuitive representation of multiple simulation runs. This concept allows to create, manage and compare alternative scenarios with the goal to understand the complex interplay between simulation input parameters and simulation outcome. The underlying data-flow network enables a flexible integration of simulation, visualization and steering components into a single application. This way, we can adapt several existing simulation modules and integrate them. Visdom comprises a client-server architecture to prepare for the future vision of decision support on-site using mobile devices. The compute-intensive parts are written as server modules controlled over the web. Visdom exploits fast GPU technology for high-performance simulation, analysis and visualization.

Links

Visdom Screenshots

Intuitive design of a breach closure using semantic steering monitors (top views) that are linked to World Lines (bottom view). The interactive World Lines view represents alternative choices (multiple related simulation runs) as a set of causally connected tracks.

Comparative visual analysis of a loaded dam break data set.

Visdom is a modular system allowing the combination of multiple steering monitors or views for comparative analysis of alternative scenarios.

Due to the extreme complexity of the problem, manual work is mandatory and cannot be supplanted completely by automatic methods. Therefore, instead of aiming for a fully automatic approach, our goal is to support the expert user (geophysicist), with advanced visualization and visual analysis capabilities in order to decrease the amount of manual work required and significantly decrease the overall time for accurate interpretation of highly complex reservoirs.

The aim of the SEIVIS project is to research, design, and implement a prototype of a novel interactive workflow for the entire process of seismic interpretation including depth conversion, which converts time in sonic measurements to actual spatial depth and is one of the major sources of inaccuracies and reasons for long interpretation times. Furthermore, research on volume visualization methods that are customized for seismic data will be performed.

The resulting system has a big potential for cost savings in the interpretation of seismic data, as well as increasing its accuracy.