Technology
Unlimited Visualization in Real Time
3DInteractive has developed visibility-guided rendering (VGR), enabling the visualization of even the most massive and detailed CAD drawings in real time.
Visibility-guided rendering is a new, output-sensitive algorithmic approach to real-time rendering, which sends only potentially visible portions of a large 3D model database to the graphics processing unit (GPU). In combination with an out-of-core memory handling process, the vast majority of the data remains on the hard drive or networked server. Visible data is streamed to the GPU asynchronously by a background process, without interrupting the visual flow. This means render performance remains essentially independent of the overall data volume. Combined with modern graphics card technology featuring powerful programmable hardware shaders, even photo-realistic illumination effects can be rendered on standard PCs and laptops.
Coping with the Data Explosion in Engineering
Visually interacting with large CAD models and digital mock-ups has become a standard procedure in engineering design, reducing planning time and cost. However, the data explosion observed in digital design so far made it necessary to reduce model complexity, e.g. through mesh reduction or manual detail elimination. This results in lower quality and even erroneous data interpretation. Moreover, such tasks often had to be outsourced to external engineering firms, incurring large costs per model and long wait times.
Although hardware performance has continuously increased ever since (governed by Moore's law), the data volume has also kept growing at an even faster rate than hardware performance - no lasting solution could therefore be expected from faster hardware.
The visibility-guided rendering technology of Interviews3D enables direct visualization of over one thousand times larger data volumes in real time, with no detail deduction required and hence no loss of quality. Our software provides the answer to the data explosion challenge.
Find out more about the key benefits of the Interviews3D digital mock-up platform.
KEY TECHNOLOGY FEATURES
- Real-time navigation through large-scale models and assemblies consisting of billions of polygons, taking advantage of 3DInteractive’s unique visibility-guided rendering and out-of-core caching strategies
- Combining massive amounts of CAD Models from various sources and data formats, together with almost unlimited laser scans and extremely large image data (hundreds of Giga pixel textures)
- Interactive editing of extremely large-scale models
- Animating 3D data to simulate (and optimize) complex workflows in real time
- Detecting and eliminating clashes before the physical realization of a new product
- Runs on standard 32-bit and 64-bit PCs, laptops and even mobile and hand-held devices
- Scales to high-end workstations, PC clusters, multi CPU / multi GPU servers (e.g. for ultra-high resolution displays and virtual reality environments)