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Geometry clipmaps: terrain rendering using nested regular grids

Published: 01 August 2004 Publication History

Abstract

Rendering throughput has reached a level that enables a novel approach to level-of-detail (LOD) control in terrain rendering. We introduce the geometry clipmap, which caches the terrain in a set of nested regular grids centered about the viewer. The grids are stored as vertex buffers in fast video memory, and are incrementally refilled as the viewpoint moves. This simple framework provides visual continuity, uniform frame rate, complexity throttling, and graceful degradation. Moreover it allows two new exciting real-time functionalities: decompression and synthesis. Our main dataset is a 40GB height map of the United States. A compressed image pyramid reduces the size by a remarkable factor of 100, so that it fits entirely in memory. This compressed data also contributes normal maps for shading. As the viewer approaches the surface, we synthesize grid levels finer than the stored terrain using fractal noise displacement. Decompression, synthesis, and normal-map computations are incremental, thereby allowing interactive flight at 60 frames/sec.

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            cover image ACM Transactions on Graphics
            ACM Transactions on Graphics  Volume 23, Issue 3
            August 2004
            684 pages
            ISSN:0730-0301
            EISSN:1557-7368
            DOI:10.1145/1015706
            Issue’s Table of Contents
            Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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            Publication History

            Published: 01 August 2004
            Published in TOG Volume 23, Issue 3

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            Author Tags

            1. level-of-detail control
            2. terrain compression and synthesis

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