visualization of particle data

[lars2015]

Is your feature request related to a problem?

• looking for different methods for visualization of MPTRAC particle data

Describe the solution you'd like

• identify different visualization tools suitable for displaying the particle data in a more fancy way (3-D plots, animations, ...)
• possibly implement new I/O functions in MPTRAC for writing/converting particle data in file formats best suited for the visualization tools

Describe alternatives you've considered

• particle data output is currently provided in the form of ASCII tables for use with gnuplot
• particle data can also be written as netCDF files for use with other visualization tools, python, ...

[lars2015]

Some visualization tools of interest:

• ParaView: https://www.paraview.org/
• Panoply: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/panoply/
• VAPOR: https://www.vapor.ucar.edu/
• VisIt: https://visit-dav.github.io/visit-website/index.html

[lars2015]

Visualization of particle data with ParView:

• this shows how to read/visualize point data simply from csv files: https://guides.lw1.at/visualizing-point-clouds/

After some testing, decided to add a new option in MPTRAC to write atm output as vtk-files (i.e. a native file format for ParaView):

• https://examples.vtk.org/site/VTKFileFormats/
• https://www.earthmodels.org/software/vtk-and-paraview/vtk-file-formats
• https://www.visitusers.org/index.php?title=ASCII_VTK_Files

Control flags:

• ATM_TYPE = 4 enables vtk output of atm data
• ATM_VTK_SCALE and ATM_VTK_OFFSET set offset and scaling factor for vertical coordinate
• ATM_SPHERE = 1 converts (lon,lat,z) to Cartesian coordinates on unit sphere (radius = 1), to enable spherical projection in ParaView

Adding a projection of an image of the Earth on a plane or on a sphere in ParaView:

• https://docs.dkrz.de/doc/visualization/sw/paraview/Filters/earth-texture/index.html
• https://www.naturalearthdata.com/

[lars2015]

Example with 3-D plane projection for Puyehue test case:

Example with 3-D spherical projection for Puyehue test case:

[lars2015]

TODO:

• check whether to write vtk output as binary rather than ASCII?
• try to add meteo data (winds, temperature, ...) to the output?
• look at scripting/creating animations with ParaView

[lars2015]

• Moved the vtk output to a separate function, write_vtk().
• Renamed control parameters:

  VTK_BASENAME = atm
  VTK_DT_OUT = 21600
  VTK_STRIDE = 1
  VTK_SCALE = 5
  VTK_OFFSET = 0.0
  VTK_SPHERE = 0

[lars2015]

• link to netCDF CF convention for saving point data: https://cfconventions.org/Data/cf-conventions/cf-conventions-1.10/cf-conventions.html#point-data

[lars2015]

Added a README and example on how to use ParaView to visualize MPTRAC particle data in the projects directory:

https://github.com/slcs-jsc/mptrac/tree/master/projects/paraview