Interactive volume rendering aurora on the GPU

We present a combination of techniques to render the aurora borealis in real time on a modern graphics processing unit (GPU). Unlike the general 3D volume rendering problem, an auroral display is emissive and can be factored into a height-dependent energy deposition function, and a 2D electron flux...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lawlor, Orion Sky, Genetti, Joe
Other Authors: Skala, Václav
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Václav Skala - UNION Agency 2011
Subjects:
objemové vykreslování
polární záře
atmosférický rozptyl
volume rendering
aurora borealis
atmospheric scattering
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/11025/1242
http://wscg.zcu.cz/WSCG2011/!_2011_J_WSCG_1-3.pdf
Description
Summary:We present a combination of techniques to render the aurora borealis in real time on a modern graphics processing unit (GPU). Unlike the general 3D volume rendering problem, an auroral display is emissive and can be factored into a height-dependent energy deposition function, and a 2D electron flux map. We also present a GPU-friendly atmosphere model, which includes an integrable analytic approximation of the atmosphere’s density along a ray. Together, these techniques enable a modern consumer graphics card to realistically render the aurora at 20–80fps, from any point of view either inside or outside the atmosphere.

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