A Real-Time Terrain Ray-Tracing Engine
Andre Silvestre, João Madeiras Pereira, Vasco S. Costa · 2018
Ray tracing is a rendering algorithm, capable of generating highly realistic images, typically employed in noninteractive applications that disregard real time performance and focus exclusively on image quality. As technological advances progressively improve GPU performance, many ray tracing algorithms have been proposed to render virtual scenes in real time with better quality than rasterization, which is more widely used in real time applications. Moreover, several works have demonstrated that ray casting is a feasible alternative to rasterization when it comes to terrain rendering. Based on an analysis of several terrain ray tracing algorithms, a real time terrain ray tracing engine was implemented leveraging those algorithms. The implemented engine does not require conversion from heightmap to polygonal meshes, employs a level-of-detail scheme based on the three-dimensional distance from the viewer and explores the use of secondary ray tracing for shadows in the context of heightfield rendering.