Methods numerically simulating the interaction of gases or fluids with complex surfaces (computational fluid dynamics, CFD) are able to perform calculations with increasing levels of detail due to the ongoing development of more powerful computers. CFD simulations are utilized during the design of e.g. combustion engines or airplanes, amongst many others. An increasing level of detail on the one hand allows for more accurate and meaningful simulation results proving very useful in industrial development and research. On the other hand, huge amounts of raw CFD data are generated and need to be repeatedly accessed during the subsequent interactive post-processing (e.g. isosurface extraction) by experts in the application domain. The efficiency of post-processing is significantly increased by the use of virtual reality (VR) technology, letting users immerse into the visualized data sets and extracted features. Interactive post-processing is efficiently performed on data sets stored in main memory, which outperforms secondary storage by magnitudes regarding access times. Large CFD data sets not fitting into main memory thus require efficient secondary storage methods.
We propose methods which appropriately arrange CFD data on secondary storage and allow for an efficient access during post-processing. The efficiency of post-processing is improved by novel view-dependent query methods. The continuous extraction and visualization of partial results in the proximity and direct line of sight of the user allow for a “quick first impression” of the result set. The approaches are enhanced by dynamic aspects, reacting to a user freely roaming the VR environment with immediate alignment of query execution and of the result data stream.
We developed the index supported graphics data server IndeGS, which offers the developed indexing and access methods and can be integrated into arbitrary virtual reality frameworks. IndeGS executes post-processing queries according to a multitude of user parameters and streams the result data to the visualizing component of the VR framework. Relational database management systems (RDBMS) offer comfortable means to integrate user-defined indexes. An improvement of the relational interval tree (RI-tree) is proposed and utilized to enable indexing and efficient view-dependent querying of CFD data in the context of interactive post-processing.
