Real-time visualization of 3D terrains and subsurface geological structures

Geological structures, both at the surface and subsurface levels, are typically represented by means of voxel data. This model presents a major drawback: its large storage requirements. In this paper, we address this problem and pro- pose the use of a stack-based representation for geological surfac...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Graciano, Alejandro, Rueda Ruiz, Antonio Jesús, Feito, Francisco R.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Jaén
Repositorio:RUJA. Repositorio Institucional de la Producción Científica de la Universidad de Jaén
OAI Identifier:oai:ruja.ujaen.es:10953/2060
Acceso en línea:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.advengsoft.2017.10.002
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0965997817304830
https://hdl.handle.net/10953/2060
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:terrain modeling
volume rendering
GPU
Descripción
Sumario:Geological structures, both at the surface and subsurface levels, are typically represented by means of voxel data. This model presents a major drawback: its large storage requirements. In this paper, we address this problem and pro- pose the use of a stack-based representation for geological surface-subsurface structures. Although this representation has been mainly used for volumetric terrain visualization in previous works, it has been used as an auxiliary data structure. Therefore, our main contribution in this work is its use as a first-class representation for both processing and visualization of surface and subsurface in- formation. The proposed solution provides real-time visualization of volumetric terrains and subsurface geological structures represented as stacks using a com- pact data representation in the GPU. Different GPU memory implementations of the stacks have been described, discussing the tradeoffs between performance and storage efficiency. We also introduce a novel algorithm for the calculation of the surface normal vectors using a hybrid object-image space strategy. More- over, important features for geoscientific applications such as visualization of boreholes or geological cross sections, and selective attenuation of strata have also been implemented in a straightforward way.