Point Containment Queries on Ray Tracing Cores for AMR Flow Visualization

TL;DR

This paper explores leveraging GPU ray tracing hardware to accelerate point containment queries, enhancing visualization of large vector fields in scientific simulations.

Contribution

It introduces novel algorithms that utilize GPU ray tracing cores for efficient point containment queries in scientific visualization.

Findings

GPU ray tracing hardware can be effectively used for scientific computations.

The proposed methods improve performance of point containment queries.

Application to large-scale vector field visualization demonstrates practical benefits.

Abstract

Modern GPUs come with dedicated hardware to perform ray/triangle intersections and bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) traversal. While the primary use case for this hardware is photorealistic 3D computer graphics, with careful algorithm design scientists can also use this special-purpose hardware to accelerate general-purpose computations such as point containment queries. This article explains the principles behind these techniques and their application to vector field visualization of large simulation data using particle tracing.