Multi-dimensional visualization of large-scale marine hydrological environmental data

• This paper develops large scale marine hydrological environmental data-oriented visualization software and realizes oceanographic planar graph, contour line rendering, isosurface rendering, factor field volume rendering and dynamic simulation of current field.
• This study establishes nodes in the scene for the management of geometric objects to realize high-performance dynamic rendering of massive marine hydrological environmental data.
• The system employs CUDA parallel computing to improve the computation rate of volume rendering of marine water environmental factors based on NetCDF (Network Common Data Form) format.
• The visualization software of marine hydrological environment developed can simulate and show properties and change process of marine water environmental factors efficiently and intuitively.

With the constant deepening of research on marine environment simulation and information expression, there are higher and higher requirements for the sense of reality of ocean data visualization results and the real-time interaction in the visualization process. This paper tackle the challenge of key technology of three-dimensional interaction and volume rendering technology based on GPU technology, develops large scale marine hydrological environmental data-oriented visualization software and realizes oceanographic planar graph, contour line rendering, isosurface rendering, factor field volume rendering and dynamic simulation of current field. To express the spatial characteristics and real-time update of massive marine hydrological environmental data better, this study establishes nodes in the scene for the management of geometric objects to realize high-performance dynamic rendering. The system employs CUDA (Computing Unified Device Architecture) parallel computing for the improvement of computation rate, uses NetCDF (Network Common Data Form) file format for data access and applies GPU programming technology to realize fast volume rendering of marine water environmental factors. The visualization software of marine hydrological environment developed can simulate and show properties and change process of marine water environmental factors efficiently and intuitively.