An experimental study on volumetric visualization of black oil reservoir models

摘要

Volume rendering techniques are essential to inspect volume data. In this work, we consider volume rendering for unstructured meshes. We focus on the visualization of black oil reservoir simulation models, represented by irregular hexahedral meshes with geometry distortions and discontinuities. We conduct an experimental study comparing three different strategies to compute the volume integration. The first strategy resamples the model in a regular grid; the second linearizes the model geometry and the variation of the scalar field within a hexahedron cell; the third uses an accurate evaluation of the scalar field at each sample. We compare performance and image quality delivered by each strategy by running a set of experiments with different models. We also investigate the gain in perception applying directional ambient occlusion shading effects. All strategies were entirely implemented on the graphics card. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.