<p>Captured and generated 3D data can be so large that it creates a problem for today's computers since they do not fit into the main or graphics card memory. Therefore methods for handling and rendering the data must be developed. This thesis presents a way to pre-process and render out-of-core height map data for real time use. The pre-processing uses a mesh decimation API called Simplygon developed by Donya Labs to optimize the geometry. From the height map a normal map can also be created and used at render time to increase the visual quality. In addition to the 3D data textures are also supported. To decrease the time to load an object the normal and texture maps can be compressed on the graphics card prior to rendering. Three different methods for covering gaps are explored of which one turns out to be insufficient for rendering cylindrical equidistant projected data.At render time two threads work in parallel. One thread is used to page the data from the hard drive to the main and graphics card memory. The other thread is responsible for rendering all data. To handle precision errors caused by spatial difference in the data each object receives a local origin and is then rendered relative to the camera. An atmosphere which handles views from both space and ground is computed on the graphics card.The result is an application adapted to current graphics card technology which can page out-of-core data and render a dataset covering the entire earth at 500 meters spatial resolution with a realistic atmosphere.</p>

Captured and generated 3D data can be so large that it creates a problem for today's computers since they do not fit into the main or graphics card memory. Therefore methods for handling and rendering the data must be developed. This thesis presents a way to pre-process and render out-of-core height map data for real time use. The pre-processing uses a mesh decimation API called Simplygon developed by Donya Labs to optimize the geometry. From the height map a normal map can also be created and used at render time to increase the visual quality. In addition to the 3D data textures are also supported. To decrease the time to load an object the normal and texture maps can be compressed on the graphics card prior to rendering. Three different methods for covering gaps are explored of which one turns out to be insufficient for rendering cylindrical equidistant projected data.At render time two threads work in parallel. One thread is used to page the data from the hard drive to the main and graphics card memory. The other thread is responsible for rendering all data. To handle precision errors caused by spatial difference in the data each object receives a local origin and is then rendered relative to the camera. An atmosphere which handles views from both space and ground is computed on the graphics card.The result is an application adapted to current graphics card technology which can page out-of-core data and render a dataset covering the entire earth at 500 meters spatial resolution with a realistic atmosphere.

<p>The problem of estimating an adequate level of detail for an object for a specific view is one of the important problems in computer 3d-graphics and is especially important in real-time applications. The well-known continuous level-of-detail technique, Real-time Optimally Adapting Meshes (ROAM), has been employed with success for almost 10 years but has at present, due to rapid development of graphics hardware, been found to be inadequate. Compared to many other level-of-detail techniques it cannot benefit from the higher triangle throughput available on graphics cards of today.</p><p>This thesis will describe the implementation of the new version of ROAM (informally known as ROAM 2.0) for the purpose of massive planetary data visualization. It will show how the problems of the old technique can be bridged to be able to adapt to newer graphics card while still benefiting from the advantages of ROAM. The resulting implementation that is presented here is specialized on spherical objects and handles both texture and geometry data of arbitrary large sizes in an efficient way.</p>

The problem of estimating an adequate level of detail for an object for a specific view is one of the important problems in computer 3d-graphics and is especially important in real-time applications. The well-known continuous level-of-detail technique, Real-time Optimally Adapting Meshes (ROAM), has been employed with success for almost 10 years but has at present, due to rapid development of graphics hardware, been found to be inadequate. Compared to many other level-of-detail techniques it cannot benefit from the higher triangle throughput available on graphics cards of today. This thesis will describe the implementation of the new version of ROAM (informally known as ROAM 2.0) for the purpose of massive planetary data visualization. It will show how the problems of the old technique can be bridged to be able to adapt to newer graphics card while still benefiting from the advantages of ROAM. The resulting implementation that is presented here is specialized on spherical objects and handles both texture and geometry data of arbitrary large sizes in an efficient way.