The complexity of graphics hardware is currently undergoing a major change with the introduction of geometry engines on relatively inexpensive single chip ASICs which now contain the complete graphics rendering pipeline in full custom hardware. While the highest performance in measured in frames per second is theultimate criteria for judging these chips, the focus is now starting to shift towards new features and different rendering techniques and pipelines. This dissertation introduces new hardware architectures for more realistic surface rendering of three dimensional objects and the rendering of volumetric datasets. Surface rendering is dealt with in the first part of the dissertation where the architectures for displacement map rendering in hardware are proposed. This work represents the first to appear in scientific literature on displacement map hardware rendering. Where possible these architectures propose components that integrate into currently available pipelines and make use of existing units in those pipelines. Displacement map rendering in hardware is a desired feature currently under development by most graphics hardware vendors. The first architecture is scan-line based and works just before rasterization and the second adaptively retessellates a triangle mesh using additional hardware on either side of the geometry transformation stage in the graphics pipeline. The VIZARDII architecture and several hardware based performance improvements for any ray casting architecture are presented in the second part titled Volume Rendering. VIZARDII is an interactve programmable hardware acelerator for Volume Rendering implemented on a PCI Card. The main pipeline is implemented on a Xilinx FPGA allowing new features to be added relatively quickly. A memory interface is presented and discussed with its final implementation appearing in the VIZARDII system. Novel architectures for ray queuing and sorting, sub-cube based space leaping are also presented which improve the performance of ray casting based hardware architectures. Antialiasing that occurs when ray casting volume data is also discussed and possible solutions are presented using multiresolutionvolume datasets.

More useful techniques, tips, and tricks for harnessing the power of the new generation of powerful GPUs.

The two volume set LNCS 6938 and LNCS 6939 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Visual Computing, ISVC 2011, held in Las Vegas, NV, USA, in September 2011. The 68 revised full papers and 46 poster papers presented together with 30 papers in the special tracks were carefully reviewed and selected from more than 240 submissions. The papers of part I (LNCS 6938) are organized in computational bioimaging, computer graphics, motion and tracking, segmentation, visualization; mapping modeling and surface reconstruction, biomedical imaging, computer graphics, interactive visualization in novel and heterogeneous display environments, object detection and recognition. Part II (LNCS 6939) comprises topics such as immersive visualization, applications, object detection and recognition, virtual reality, and best practices in teaching visual computing.

We humans are tribal, grouping ourselves by a multitude of criteria: physical, intellectual, political, emotional, etc. The Internet and its auxiliary technologies have enabled a novel dimension in tribal behavior during our recent past. This growing connectivity begs the question: will individuals and their communities come together to solve some very urgent global problems? At MMVR, we explore ways to harness information technology to solve healthcare problems - and in the industrialized nations we are making progress. In the developing world however, things are more challenging. Massive urban poverty fuels violence and misery. Will global networking bring a convergence of individual and tribal problem-solving? Recently, a barrel-shaped water carrier that rolls along the ground was presented, improving daily life for many people. Also the One Laptop per Child project is a good example of how the industrialized nations can help the developing countries. They produce durable and simple laptops which are inexpensive to produce. At MMVR, we focus on cutting-edge medical technology, which is generally pretty expensive. While the benefits of innovation trickle downward, from the privileged few to the broader masses, we should expand this trickle into a flood. Can breakthrough applications in stimulation, visualization, robotics, and informatics engender tools as ingeniously as the water carrier or laptop? With some extra creativity, we can design better healthcare for the developing world too.