Real-time visualization of 3D atmospheric data using OpenSpace

Sammanfattning: Visualization is an important tool for presenting data to humans in an easy-to-understand manner. With new radar technology in development that can gather 3D atmosphere data, it opens up new possibilities for using 3D visualization tools to visualize the data, e.g, OpenSpace. OpenSpace is an open-source tool for visualization of the cosmos and universe. An evaluation of different rendering methods inside OpenSpace is evaluated to answer which method is most suitable for visualizing atmospheric 3D data. The data is in the format of HDF5 files and contains a list of beams with samples scattered along the beams, an algorithm is implemented to transform the beam data into a 3D volume which is used inside OpenSpace to be rendered. Tests are implemented to gather information on which parameter in the algorithm affects CPU execution time the most. The tests consist of executing the algorithm 100 times with different combinations of parameters to see which parameter has the largest effect on execution time, and a complexity analysis is calculated to evaluate the complexity of the algorithm. The results of the tests shows that the height of the volume affects execution performance the most on larger sizes. On small sizes, the difference between the different dimensions are insignificant. With the combination of height and smoothing, it slowed the execution time by a larger margin compared to width and smoothing or depth and smoothing. By implementing Volumetric ray casting and Point clouds as rendering methods, the results showed that both can visualize the data in real-time. Volumetric ray casting rendered with a clearer result in comparison to Point clouds, thus, Volumetric ray-casting is the preferred method to use when rendering atmospheric 3D volumes that is able to meet certain criteria.