Paper Info
Title
Visualization of large terrains made easy
Abstract
We present an elegant and simple to implement framework for performing out-of-core visualization and view-dependent refinement of large terrain surfaces. Contrary to the recent trend of increasingly elaborate algorithms for large-scale terrain visualization, our algorithms and data structures have been designed with the primary goal of simplicity and efficiency of implementation. Our approach to managing large terrain data also departs from more conventional strategies based on data tiling. Rather than emphasizing how to segment and efficiently bring data in and out of memory, we focus on the manner in which the data is laid out to achieve good memory coherency for data accesses made in a top-down (coarse-to-fine) refinement of the terrain. We present and compare the results of using several different data indexing schemes, and propose a simple to compute index that yields substantial improvements in locality and speed over more commonly used data layouts.Our second contribution is a new and simple, yet easy to generalize method for view-dependent refinement. Similar to several published methods in this area, we use longest edge bisection in a top-down traversal of the mesh hierarchy to produce a continuous surface with subdivision connectivity. In tandem with the refinement, we perform view frustum culling and triangle stripping. These three components are done together in a single pass over the mesh. We show how this framework supports virtually any error metric, while still being highly memory and compute efficient.
Year
DOI
Venue
2001
10.1109/VISUAL.2001.964533
IEEE Visualization 2003
Keywords
Field
DocType
good memory coherency,different data indexing scheme,view-dependent refinement,large terrains,large terrain surface,data layout,mesh hierarchy,large-scale terrain visualization,out-of-core visualization,large terrain data,data structure,data access,implementation,velocity,visualization,indexation,compression algorithms,top down,data visualisation,memory coherency,data structures,efficiency,algorithms
Data structure,Viewing frustum,Data visualization,Tree traversal,Out of memory,Computer science,Visualization,Terrain,Theoretical computer science,Terrain rendering
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
1070-2385
0-7803-7200-X
94
PageRank 
References 
Authors
4.76
21
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Peter Lindstrom11838103.19
Valerio Pascucci23241192.33