Texture-Based Multiresolution Flow Visualization

When there is a discrepancy between flow-field resolution and screen resolution, traditional multiresolution texture advection methods easily result in the visual perception, including texture aliasing artifacts and a lack of detail. To address the issues, in this paper, we propose an adaptive multiresolution texture rendering algorithm for flow visualization. The algorithm is based on the construction of texture advection volume which is the intermediate representation of the underlying flow field. Using the intermediate geometry, the trajectory for flow texture advection can be more accurately obtained at arbitrary resolutions. The visual contrast of the texture is maintained by the mapping from texture space to advection volume space in combination with a novel texture blending approach considering the characteristics of the reference texture. Finally, the appropriate resolution for flow regions is selected adaptively through mip-mapping for advection volume and noise texture to avoid unsatisfactory rendering results as the user zooms in and out of the field. The validity of multiresolution algorithms is examined by the objective assessment metric based on particle position errors and the subjective assessment. Good consistency between the objective metric and subjective assessment is revealed by the high match rate. Experiment results also demonstrate the accurate traces and high-quality detail achieved by the proposed algorithm.