LOD-Sprite Technique for Accelerated Terrain Rendering

Abstract

We present a new rendering technique, termed LOD-sprite rendering which uses a combination of a level-of-detail (LOD) representation of the scene together with reusing image sprites (previously rendered images). Our primary application is accelerating terrain rendering. The LOD-sprite technique renders an initial frame using a high-resolution model of the scene geometry. It renders subsequent frames with a much lower-resolution model of the scene geometry and texture-maps each polygon with the image sprite from the initial high-resolution frame. As it renders these subsequent frames the technique measures the error associated with the divergence of the view position from the position where the initial frame was rendered. Once this error exceeds a user-defined threshold the technique re-renders the scene from the high-resolution model. We have efficiently implemented the LOD-sprite technique with texture-mapping graphics hardware. Although to date we have only applied LOD-sprite to terrain rendering, it could easily be extended to other applications. We feel LOD-sprite holds particular promise for real-time rendering systems.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 1999
Accession Number
ADA606780

Entities

People

  • Arie Kaufman
  • Baoquan Chen
  • Eddy Kuo
  • J. E. Swan Ii

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Computational Complexity
  • Computer Graphics
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Environment
  • Geometry
  • Graphics
  • High Resolution
  • Low Resolution
  • Military Research
  • Polygons
  • Quadrants
  • Three Dimensional
  • Triangles
  • Virtual Reality
  • Visualizations

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Vision.