Abstract
In this work we present “Astera’’, a cosmological visualization tool that renders a mock universe in real time using Unreal Engine 4. The large scale structure of the cosmic web is hard to visualize in two dimensions, and a 3D real time projection of this distribution allows for an unprecedented view of the large scale universe, with visually accurate galaxies placed in a dynamic 3D world. The underlying data are based on empirical relations assigned using results from N-Body dark matter simulations, and are matched to galaxies with similar morphologies and sizes, images of which are extracted from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Within Unreal Engine 4, galaxy images are transformed into textures and dynamic materials (with appropriate transparency) that are applied to static mesh objects with appropriate sizes and locations. To ensure excellent performance, these static meshes are “instanced’’ to utilize the full capabilities of a graphics processing unit. Additional components include a dynamic system for representing accelerated-time active galactic nuclei. The end result is a visually realistic large scale universe that can be explored by a user in real time, with accurate large scale structure. Astera is not yet ready for public release, but we are exploring options to make different versions of the code available for both research and outreach applications.
Highlights
The predominantly accepted cosmological paradigm, ΛCDM, predicts that structure in the universe forms via the collapse of dark matter into distinct filaments, voids and haloes [1,2]. This underlying substructure acts as a tracer for baryonic matter, which falls into the potential wells of dark matter haloes and forms galaxies
It is predominantly agreed that the large scale, 3-Dimensional structure of the universe is dictated by the structure of underlying dark matter
A simple validation to show that these components are “working together” as expected is shown in Figure 3, where we show the average predicted 3D mass density profile for elliptical galaxies of stellar mass 11.3 < log10 M∗ /M < 11.7
Summary
The predominantly accepted cosmological paradigm, ΛCDM, predicts that structure in the universe forms via the collapse of dark matter into distinct filaments, voids and haloes [1,2]. The latter, “real time” rendering, requires digital assets to be processed “on the fly”, and must be processed quickly enough to ensure that the image can be recreated many times a second This requires significant computational power, but crucially allows for user interactivity, with potentially unlimited scope for the user having dynamic control over the experience. This is followed (Section 3) by a description of the technical implementation of Astera itself within Unreal Engine 4.
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