FieldView: An interactive software tool for exploration of three-dimensional vector fields

TL;DR

FieldView is an interactive visualization tool that leverages GPU-based mesh shaders to enable detailed exploration of complex three-dimensional vector fields, aiding researchers and professionals in physics and engineering.

Contribution

Introduces FieldView, a novel GPU-accelerated software for visualizing 3D vector fields using mesh shaders, with practical application in magnetic field visualization at CERN.

Findings

Efficient GPU-based rendering of vector fields.

Application in CERN's magnetic field visualization.

Enhanced analysis of complex physical phenomena.

Abstract

Vector fields are one of the fundamental parts of mathematics which are key for modelling many physics phenomena such as electromagnetic fields or fluid and gas flows. Fields found in nature often exhibit complex structures which can be difficult to analyze in full detail without a graphical representation. In this paper we introduce FieldView -- an application targeted at academics and industry professionals wanting to visualize vector fields using various rendering techniques. FieldView uses a novel way of evaluation of the field and construction of the displayed elements directly on the GPU which is based on the recently introduced mesh shader graphics pipeline by NVIDIA. Research done for FieldView development has found practical application in the form of magnetic field visualisation integrated in the data processing framework developed by ALICE experiment at CERN.