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Hierarchical occlusion culling for arbitrarily-meshed height fields

Many graphics applications today have need for high-speed 3-D visualization of height fields. Most of these applications deal with the display of digital terrain models characterized by a simple, but vast, non-overlapping mesh of triangles. A great deal of research has been done to find methods of optimizing such systems. The goal of this work is to establish an algorithm to efficiently preprocess a hierarchical height field model that enables the real-time culling of occluded geometry while still allowing for classic terrain-rendering frameworks. By exploiting the planar-monotone characteristics of height fields, it is possible to create a unique and efficient occlusion culling method that is optimized for terrain rendering and similar applications. Previous work has shown that culling is possible with certain regularly-gridded height field models, but not until now has a system been shown to work with all height fields, regardless of how their meshes are constructed. By freeing the system of meshing restrictions, it is possible to incorporate a number of broader height field algorithms with widely-used applications such as flight simulators, GIS systems, and computer games.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:TEXASAandM/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/231
Date30 September 2004
CreatorsEdmondson, Paul Michael
ContributorsKeyser, John, Amato, Nancy, House, Donald H.
PublisherTexas A&M University
Source SetsTexas A and M University
Languageen_US
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis, text
Format3618214 bytes, 122805 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, text/plain, born digital

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