Large model visualization: techniques and applications

The visual representation of complex data has always been a major motivation for computer graphics. However, there have always been computer graphics scenes which were too complex to be rendered within a reasonable time limit, or even too complex to be rendered at all with the available resources. Nevertheless, computer graphics has become one of the primary tools used for the interpretation of data from engineering or science. By the end of the eighties, the application of computer graphics methods for the visual interpretation of scientific data became a research field on its own and was called Scientific Visualization. By now, it is almost unthinkable to understand data, which is generated by simulations or is measured, without any graphics or visualization technology. The technology used ranges from simple plot drawings, via direct volume rendering techniques to provide semi-transparent view through a dataset, to illuminated streamlines, and line integral convolutions to visualize the flow of particles through multi-dimensional and multi-variate data