
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Beeson, Brett 
A1  - Barnes, David G. 
A1  - Bourke, Paul D. 
T1  - A Distributed Data Implementation of the Perspective Shear-Warp Volume Rendering Algorithm for Visualisation of Large Astronomical Cubes
JF  - Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia
JO  - Publ. Astron. Soc.  Aust.
Y1  - 2003
VL  - 20
IS  - 3
SP  - 300
EP  - 313
KW  - methods: data analysis &#8212; techniques: image processing &#8212; surveys
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1071/AS03039 
N2  - We describe the first distributed data implementation of the perspective shear-warp volume rendering algorithm and explore its applications to large astronomical data cubes and simulation realisations. Our system distributes sub-volumes of 3-dimensional images to leaf nodes of a Beowulf-class cluster, where the rendering takes place. Junction nodes composite the sub-volume renderings together and pass the combined images upwards for further compositing or display. We demonstrate that our system out-performs other software solutions and can render a &#39;worst-case&#39; 512 &#215; 512 &#215; 512 data volume in less than four seconds using 16 rendering and 15 compositing nodes. Our system also performs very well compared with much more expensive hardware systems. With appropriate commodity hardware, such as Swinburne's Virtual Reality Theatre or a 3Dlabs Wildcat graphics card, stereoscopic display is possible. 
ER  -

