A Brief Terrain Rendering Literature Review
J. Edward Swan · 1999
Rendering terrain data is an important application area in computer graphics. Much early work in computer graphics was motivated by building flight simulators. This is a very taxing application, which requires real-time rendering of potentially very large databases. In addition, terrain rendering is important for geographic information systems and architectural landscape previewing systems. The most common source of terrain data is earth terrain data obtained from aerial or satellite imagery [2]. The terrain data typically comes in the form of two datasets: a color or texture image (typically from an aerial or satellite photograph) and topology or elevation samples. The color dataset is usually at a much higher resolution than the elevation dataset [1]. These two data sources are registered and merged [2] to form two arrays: a 2D array of height values, and a 2D array of color values. Typically the color values have three channels corresponding to red, green, and blue; but other color channels (such as infrared, ultraviolet, etc.) are possible. These two arrays are the typical input to a terrain renderer. Another source of terrain data are fractal techniques (e.g. Musgrave et al. [15]), which generate realistic-looking yet artificial terrains. These techniques motivated much of the terrain rendering research in the 1980s.