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PlumeViz: A WebGL-based Viewer for Hydrothermal Plumes
1. Introduction
PlumeViz is a WebGL-based viewer which presents 3D visualizations of hydrothermal plume within standard web browsers. The viewer supports interactive surface and volume rendering of plume objects through the WebGL API in web browsers and the capabilities of the GPU in computers. As a browser-running and open source product, PlumeViz is easy to get running and gives users a unique opportunity to monitor what happening in the code and permits the adaption of the code into their particular interests whenever needed.
The user interface of PlumeViz
2. Visualizations and Basic Operations
As the user interface of PlumeViz shown in the figure above, five visualizations are implemented in five webpages. Each webpage contains a viewport for visualization and a control panel to manipulate le I/O, variables changes, and fire functions on the fly. In the viewer, users can zoom in/out, rotate, and pan a visualization by mouse or keyboard.
(1) Data Frame View shows plume objects in a data frame along with a bounding box. Users can load multiple data frames at a time and flip the view forwards and backwords like to photo album.
(2) Scenario View places the plume objects from one or a bunch of timesteps in the context of the seafloor (bathymetry) to give a reference of the sizes and positions of plumes and illustrates the relationships between the two plumes and the seafloor.
(3) Timeline View juxtaposes plume objects and centerlines of consecutive timesteps in a timeline to show the temporal variability of plume motions.
(4) Quadrant View places plumes in a polar coordinate to give an intuitive summary of the bending magnitudes and directions of plumes in a period of time.
(5) Summary View
3. Source Code
All source code of the tool (stored in a zipfolder) can be downloaded from here
4. Testing Dataset
A dataset (isosurfaces of plume objects) for testing PlumeViz can be downloaded from here
The basics and program of data processing can be found from here
Any questions about PlumeViz, please contact the developer Li Liu: l.liu6819@gmail.com