Skip to main content

Quad-Tree Atlas Ray Casting: A GPU Based Framework for Terrain Visualization and Its Applications

  • Conference paper
Transactions on Edutainment VII

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((TEDUTAIN,volume 7145))

Abstract

We propose a novel framework for terrain visualization (We call it Quad-tree atlas ray casting). The main ideal of our framework is to lay the height field textures and the color textures of all visible terrain tiles in a big texture respectively, then use the single big height field texture and the single big color texture to perform ray casting to get the final image. The framework is very simple, but it is advantaged in many aspects, e.g., steady frame rate, effortless levels of detail, efficient out of core, easy vector data rendering and high image quality with screen space error below one.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Losasso, F., Hoppe, H.: Geometry clipmaps: Terrain rendering using nested regular grids. In: Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH, pp. 769–776 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Lindstrom, P., Koller, D., Ribarsky, W., Hodges, L.F., Faust, N., Turner, G.A.: Real-time, continuous level of detail rendering of height fields. In: Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH, pp. 109–118 (1996)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Pajarola, R.: Large scale terrain visualization using the restricted quadtree triangulation. In: Proceedings of IEEE Visualization, pp. 19–26 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Duchaineau, M., Wolinsky, M., Sigeti, D.E., Miller, M.C., Aldrich, C., Mineev-weinstein, M.B.: ROAMing terrain: Real-time optimally adapting meshes. In: Proceedings of IEEE Visualization, pp. 81–88 (1997)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Qu, H., Qiu, F., Zhang, N., Kaufman, A., Wan, M.: Raytracing heigh fields. In: Proceedings of Computer Graphics International (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Dick, C., Krüge, J., Westerman, R.: GPU ray-casting for scalable terrain rendering. In: Proceedings of EUROGRAPHICS, Areas Paper (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Oh, K., Ki, H., Lee, C.H.: Pyramidal displacement mapping: A gpu based artifacts-free ray tracing through an image pyramid. In: Proceedings of ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, pp. 75–82 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Tevs, A., Ihrke, I., Seidel, H.P.: Maximum mipmaps for fast, accurate, and scalable dynamic height field rendering. In: Proceedings of ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games, pp. 183–190 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Dungan Jr., W.: A terrain and cloud computer image generation model. Computer Graphics 13(2), 143–150 (1979)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Kajiya, J.T.: New techniques for ray tracing procedurally defined objects. ACM Transactions on Graphics 2(3), 161–181 (1983)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Musgrave, K.: Grid tracing: Fast ray tracing for height fields. Technical report, Yale University, Department of Computer Science (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Hoppe, H.: Smooth view-dependent level-of-detail control and its application to terrain rendering. In: Proceedings of IEEE Visualization, pp. 35–42 (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Henning, C., Stephenson, P.: Accelerating the ray tracing of height fields. In: Proceedings of ACM GRAPHITE, pp. 254–288 (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Policarpo, F., Oliveira, M.M.: Relief mapping of non-heightfield surface details. In: Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2005 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games, pp. 55–62 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Tatarchuk, N.: Dynamic parallax occlusionmapping with approximate soft shadows. In: Proceedings of ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games, pp. 63–69 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Ohbuchi, E.: A real-time refraction renderer for volume objects using a polygon-rendering scheme. In: Proceedings of Computer Graphics International, pp. 190–195 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Risser, E., Shan, M., Pattanaik, S.: Interval mapping. Technical report, University of Central Florida (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  18. Jeschke, S., Mantler, S., Wimmer, M.: Interactive smooth and curved shell mapping. In: Proceedings of Eurographics Symposium on Rendering, pp. 351–360 (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Balciunas, D.A., Dulley, L.P., Zuffo, M.K.: GPU- assisted ray casting of large scenes. In: Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Interactive Ray Tracing, vol. 31, pp. 95–103 (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Cignoni, P., Ganovelli, F., Gobbetti, E., Marton, F., Ponchio, F., Scopigno, R.: BDAM - batched dynamic adaptive meshes for high performance terrain visualization. In: Proceedings of EUROGRAPHICS, pp. 505–514 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  21. Livny, Y., Sokolovsky, N., Grinshpoun, T., El-sana, J.: Persistent grid mapping: A gpu-based framework for interactive terrain rendering. The Visual Computer (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  22. Bruneton, E., Neyret, F.: Real-time rendering and editing of vector-based terrains. In: Proceedings of EUROGRAPHICS, vol. 27, pp. 311–320 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  23. Dick, C., Schneider, J., Westermann, R.: Efficient geometry compression for GPU-based decoding in realtime terrain rendering. Computer Graphics Forum 28(1), 67–83 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Ammann, L., Génevaux, O., Dischler, J.-M.: Hybrid rendering of dynamic heightfields using ray-casting and mesh rasterization. In: Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2010, pp. 161–168 (May 2010), http://lsiit-cnrs.unistra.fr/Publications/2010/AGD10

  25. Dick, C., Krüger, J., Westermann, R.: GPU-aware hybrid terrain rendering. In: Proceedings of IADIS Computer Graphics, Visualization, Computer Vision and Image Processing 2010, pp. 3–10 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  26. NVIDIA. Improve batching using texture atlases. SDK White Paper (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  27. Krzysztof, N., Budirijanto, P., Jonathan, C.: Multi-grained level of detail using a hierarchical seamless texture atlas. In: Proceedings of ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  28. Jürgen, D., Konstantin, B., Klaus, H.: Texturing techniques for terrain visualization. In: Proceedings of the 11th IEEE Visualization 2000 Conference (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  29. Cohen, D.: Appearance-Preserving Simplification of Polygonal Models. PhD thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  30. WIKIPEDIA (2010), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriging

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Luo, J., Ni, G., Cui, P., Jiang, J., Duan, Y., Hu, G. (2012). Quad-Tree Atlas Ray Casting: A GPU Based Framework for Terrain Visualization and Its Applications. In: Pan, Z., Cheok, A.D., Müller, W., Chang, M., Zhang, M. (eds) Transactions on Edutainment VII. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7145. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29050-3_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29050-3_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-29049-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-29050-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics