Conservative visibility preprocessing for efficient walkthroughs of 3D scenes
Harry Plantinga · 1993
In this paper I address the problem of pre-computing visibility information to increase the efficiency of interactive walkthroughs of large 3-D CAD models such as buildings. The approach presented assumes the use of graphics hardware including hidden-surface removal hardware. The goal is to automatically partition viewpoint space into regions and pre-compute visibility information for each region that is conservative in the sense that the display list computed for a region is a superset of the set of objects that are weakly visible from that region. To render a view from a region, the display list for the region is processed with hidden-surface removal hardware, so that the correct scene is rendered. However, only a small fraction of the faces in a scene may have to be rendered from any viewpoint. The conservative nature of the visibility computation makes possible the use of many techniques for speeding the preprocessing phase and reducing storage requirements for visibility informati...