Spatial and temporal processes visualization for marine environmental data using particle system

摘要

Many observation methods have been employed to monitor the changes in the ecological environment. Marine environment monitoring data have characteristics of complex diversity, high spatial-resolution, high time-frequency, and multi-level free-surface depth. In this study, we constructed a three-dimensional temporal-spatial visualization model to express the spatial-temporal variations using particle system. For the temporal dimension, we visualized the dynamic real-time changes by changing properties such as particle color, displacement, and size by calculating the difference between the data at adjacent points in time in different frames. To achieve high quality dynamic display, we introduced the CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) parallel computing model to realize large-scale particle change visualization. This model reduced the CPU load and significantly improved the frame rate. Moreover, this model provides virtual simulation and user interaction rendering, which can dynamically change the environment data type, rendering mode, drawing profiles, and other functions. Finally, we integrated the model as a system component into China's offshore environmental data monitoring and management platform.