Real-Time Particle Graphics for Accurate Rendering of Gaseous and Particulate Volumes

Physically accurate, real-time image synthesis is critical for hardware-in-the-loop testing of advanced seeker systems. A major challenge is accurate rendering of gaseous and particulate volumes such as aircraft exhaust plumes and contrails. To advance the U.S. Air Force capabilities in this area, development of a generalized method other will compute and inject volume-based flow field imagery into mainstream (polygon-based) simulations is proposed. This method uses particle graphic to obtain very high image fidelity. Phase I will investigate two innovative approaches that will, for the first time, enable real-time performance in commercial graphic computing platforms. The first is a software solution that exploits the texture-mapping capabilities of low-cost graphics platforms. The second is an innovative hardware coprocessor capable of greater image speed an fidelity. The primary objective will be to determine the performance that can be realized used both approaches. This objective will be accomplished by implementing a software prototype that generate images from flow field data sets. Evaluation of the software prototype will provide the basis for developing a first-generation systems in Phase II.