LOD-sprite technique for accelerated terrain rendering
Baoquan Chen, J. Edward Swan, Eddy Kuo, Arie E. Kaufman · 1999
We present a new rendering technique, termed LOD-sprite render-ing, which uses a combination of a level-of-detail (LOD) represen-tation of the scene together with reusing image sprites (previously rendered images). Our primary application is accelerating terrain rendering. The LOD-sprite technique renders an initial frame using a high-resolution model of the scene geometry. It renders subse-quent frames with a much lower-resolution model of the scene ge-ometry and texture-maps each polygon with the image sprite from the initial high-resolution frame. As it renders these subsequent frames the technique measures the error associated with the diver-gence of the view position from the position where the initial frame was rendered. Once this error exceeds a user-defined threshold, the technique re-renders the scene from the high-resolution model. We have efficiently implemented the LOD-sprite technique with texture-mapping graphics hardware. Although to date we have only applied LOD-sprite to terrain rendering, it could easily be extended to other applications. We feel LOD-sprite holds particular promise for real-time rendering systems.