Good terrain geometry, cheap! Page: 3 of 24
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must be absent or minimized) and scenes generated may be required to exhibit consistency
with scenes generated by other more or less capable renderers1. Terrain rendering for
interactive visualization systems (e.g., flight simulators) comprises an active area of
research which evidences these concerns in particularly acute form.FIGURE 1. A snapshot of terrain produced using the algorithms presented here
Although graphics hardware now supports greater and ever-increasing polygon through-
put, the demand for these polygons is not limited to terrain: atmospheric models, such as
clouds; models of background objects and clutter; and models of objects of interest all
insist on their fair share of the polygon supply. So, although more polygons are available,
each individual polygon must deliver more value. Thus it is now timely to examine meth-
ods which can address polygon utilization and which can precisely place detail where
needed.
We have developed and implemented an interesting new algorithm which shows promise
in addressing optimal polygon utilization in real-time. The work presented here deals with
rendering terrain from a moving viewpoint in real time. We focus our present treatment on
issues relating to assuring accurate terrain geometry: questions related to the appearance
of these terrain polygons will be addressed separately.
The precise problem definition presented here and the algorithms developed have been
influenced by a variety of considerations. First, our terrain generation algorithms support
an interactive real-time rendering system by supplying the renderer with terrain triangles.
The renderer devotes only a fraction of its polygon budget to terrain. Therefore our algo-
rithms must run in real-time and work with a fixed and possibly small triangle budget
1. Assuring the requisite consistency of independent simulations in real-time adds an additional challenge to
an already demanding task.Good terrain geometry, cheap!
January 14, 1997
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Duchaineau, M.; Wolinsky, M. & Sigeti, D.E. Good terrain geometry, cheap!, article, April 1, 1997; New Mexico. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc699369/m1/3/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.