NPSNET: Hierarchical Data Structures for Real-Time Three-Dimensional Visual Simulation

Abstract

NPSNET is a low-cost visual simulation system designed and constructed at the Naval Postgraduate School. NPSNET uses digital terrain data and renders scenes involving vehicles, aircraft, cultural features, and natural features in real-time. The implementation of a terrain paging algorithm in NPSNET is discussed. Terrain paging expands the terrain area available for simulation and overcomes the limits of main memory size. Hierarchical data structures commonly used in visual simulation systems are surveyed. The generation of a multi-resolution terrain dataset and the implementation of a hierarchical data structure are explained. The multi-resolution dataset is created by generating lower resolution descriptions of polygons from the original data. The hierarchical data structure used in NPSNET, based on quadtrees, provides a means to attenuate the resolution of terrain over distance and cull those portions of terrain outside of the user's field of view.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1991
Accession Number
ADA246380

Entities

People

  • Randall L. Mackey

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Algorithms
  • Autonomous Underwater Vehicles
  • Command And Control
  • Computer Graphics
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Data Sets
  • Demographic Cohorts
  • Graphics
  • High Resolution
  • Low Resolution
  • Simulators
  • Three Dimensional
  • Two Dimensional
  • United States
  • Vehicles

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Vision.
  • Robotics and Automation.