Horizon Bending for Stylized Spherical Worlds.
Christoph Kubisch, Per Normann Abrahamsen · Vision Modeling and Visualization · 2009
We present a technique that creates the illusion of a spherical world, while the source scene description is from a flat world. The latter allows us to use standard techniques of planar terrain rendering and physics with a single directional gravity. This is less complex than having an actual spherical world, where different techniques and scene editors are used. Our deformation effect allows us to change the curvature at runtime, which can be used to adjust the appearance of the world or add dramatic effects. Another benefit using this technique is that it allows to limit view distance. In a planar world the view distance can be quite high, which may require level-of-detail techniques. Using a modified visibility test according to the world’s curvature, we benefit from drawing less objects, while assuming most detail lies on the ground and the view direction is mostly parallel to ground.