Hardware-accelerated attribute mapping for interactive visualization of complex 3D trajectories

The visualization of 3D trajectories of moving objects and related attributes in 3D virtual environments represents a fundamental functionality in various visualization domains. Interactive rendering and visual analytics of such attributed trajectories involves both conceptual questions as well as technical challenges. Specifically, the mapping of trajectory attributes to rendering primitives and appearance represents a challenging task in the case of large data sets of high geometric complexity. There are various visualization approaches and rendering techniques considering specific aspects of these mappings to facilitate visualization and analysis of this kind of data. To solve the underlying general mapping problem efficiently, we developed an approach that uses and combines diverse types of visualizations, rather than being tailored to a specific use case. This paper describes an interactive rendering system for the visualization of 3D trajectories that enables the combinations of different mappings as well as their dynamic configuration at runtime. A fully hardware-accelerated implementation enables the processing of large sets of attributed 3D trajectories in real-time.