Real-time rendering of ocean in marine simulator

The scientific, rapid and realistic rendering of ocean is always a difficult problem in marine simulator. A spectrum method of ocean simulation was developed in the paper. The fast Fourier transform based on GPU was used to generate the height map. A grid model of concentric circles was proposed to replace ocean surface geometry, and the height of grid vertex could be obtained through accessing the height map in vertex shader. Then the choppy waves was simulated and the repeating tiles of ocean was reduced. The reflection and refraction of ocean surface were rendered. The method developed in the paper has been successfully applied in the visual system of marine simulator.