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## Software rendered images

The Volume plot uses hardware-accelerated graphics by default. While you will want to operate in this mode most of the time, since it's faster, images drawn by software are more accurate. To get a more accurate image, select Ray casting from the Rendering method combo box. When the Volume plot is set to use ray casting as its rendering mode, VisIt recalculates what the image should look like in software mode. Note that this can be a time-consuming process if the database being used is large or if the visualization window is large. We recommend shrinking the size of the visualization window before changing the rendering method to ray casting to reduce the time and resources required to draw the plot. It is worth noting that if you have a large dataset with intricate details, the software volume rendering method is the best method to use because it scales well in parallel. Using a parallel compute engine can greatly speed up the rate at which software volume rendering operates as long as the dataset is domain-decomposed into equal-sized pieces.