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Louisiana State University Selects SGI Technology for Storm Modeling and Scientific Visualization
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  • Web Quality: 72 dpi, RGB, JPEG format
This is an image of the vortex of Hurricane Katrina. Description:
Silicon Graphics Prism® visualization system and SGI® OpenGL Vizserver® software add real-time 3D collaborative visualization to Hurricane Katrina research. Here, the visualization fades over to a display of the wind field and the temperature field that interacted with the atmospheric evolution. The wind field, a vector field, is visualized using the technique of illuminated stream lines. This helps to display integral lines at each time step of a vector field. As designed for a visualization method for static vector fields, these stream lines may vary significantly from one time step to another. In the case of the MM5 data, data are available for each 30 minutes in real time, so the time jumps from one frame to the next accordingly. This was possible, as the vortex of the hurricane's eye provided a clearly visible, stable point of reference for all time steps. Overlaid with the streamline visualization is the temperature field of the atmosphere. It is displayed via volume rendering and matches with the streamlines of the wind field.
Credit: Download:
Image Courtesy of LSU • JPEG (ZIP 172K)
This is an image of the atmospheric data of Hurricane Katrina. Description:
Silicon Graphics Prism visualization system aids Hurricane Katrina modeling. Here the evolution of the atmospheric data is stopped in order to zoom in to a closer view of the city. Replaying the evolution of the ADCIRC surge data enables the detailed effects on Lake Pontchartrain to be evaluated. Through the extreme resolution of the surge data images, one can easily identify the Mississippi river and the channels. The height field display of the elevation data clearly depicts the intensity of the flood. At the last frame, the shaded display of the surge surface is withheld, depicting the high resolution triangular grid that was used for the simulation. Also, the same frame depicts the multiple layers of GIS data of various resolutions that contribute to the holistic visualization.
Credit: Download:
Image Courtesy of LSU • JPEG (ZIP 484K)