A real time particle system for display of ship wakes

The particle-system technique is used to model 'fuzzy objects', i.e. objects not bounded by well-defined, easily visible surfaces. the technique is used to depict, in real time, ship wakes in an air/sea simulation using a high-speed workstation for graphics calculation and display. The system consists of a graphics workstation tied to a compute server (typically a minicomputer, mainframe, or parallel processor, depending on the simulation complexity). The compute server executes the dynamic models associated with the vehicles in the simulation. The position and attitude of each vehicle are periodically transmitted to the graphics workstation, where a rendering of the situation is produced and displayed. Such a system normally runs at a frame redraw rate of 10 frames per second or greater to sustain an illusion of smooth movement. The ship wake phenomenon and its modeling, including some simplifications, are described.<<ETX>>