Using Graphics Hardware to Speed Up Visibility Queries
Laurent Alonso, Nicolas Holzschuch · Journal of Graphics Tools · 2000
We present a visibility method that takes advantage of the graphics hardware to give fast an swers to visibility queries. Our visibility method is designed to solve two types of visibility queries: point-based visibility queries, where several visibility queries share the same origin, and plane-based visibility queries, where several visibility queries have their origins on the same plane. Both occur frequently in global illumination algorithms. Combining the speed given by graphics hardware with a software heuristic to avoid reliability problems, our visibility method is significantly faster than ray -casting, and still gives the same results.