Real-time particle graphics for infrared (IR) scene generation

One of the challenging areas in real-time infrared (IR) scene generation is rendering gaseous and particulate volumes such as missile and aircraft exhaust plumes. New research in particle graphics has shown potential for improving the spatial/temporal fidelity of images produced by present systems. To apply particle graphics in real-time applications, new techniques were developed to leverage the resources in modem computing platforms, particularly the separate pipelines for general-purpose computing and three-dimensional (3-D) graphics. By taking advantage of these combined resources, the new method has been used to demonstrate real-time frame rates on low-end commercial systems. The rendering software internally computes, stores, and blends pixel intensities in floating point precision so that pixel accuracy is maintained over many decades of flow field emission level. The rendering scheme is scalable, providing a continuum of speed-fidelity tradeoffs across different computing platforms. The rendering approach has also been extended to incorporate moving particles in order to inject dynamic characteristics such as flow and turbulence into the IR imagery, providing a capability not available in current hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) systems.