We present an algorithm for real-time level of detail reduction and display of high-complexity polygonal surface data. The algorithm uses a compact and efficient regular grid representation, and employs a variable screen-space threshold to bound the maximum error of the projected image. A coarse level of simplification is performed to select discrete levels of detail for blocks of the surface mesh, followed by further simplification through repolygonalization in which individual mesh vertices are considered for removal. These steps compute and generate the appropriate level of detail dynamically in real-time, minimizing the number of rendered polygons and allowing for smooth changes in resolution across areas of the surface. The algorithm has been implemented for approximating and rendering digital terrain models and other height fields, and consistently performs at interactive frame rates with high image quality.

Terrain visualization is a difficult problem for applications requiring accurate images of large datasets at high frame rates, such as flight simulation and ground-based aircraft testing using synthetic sensor stimulation. On current graphics hardware, the problem is to maintain dynamic, view-dependent triangle meshes and texture maps that produce good images at the required frame rate. We present an algorithm for constructing triangle meshes that optimizes flexible view-dependent error metrics, produces guaranteed error bounds, achieves specified triangle counts directly, and uses frame-to-frame coherence to operate at high frame rates for thousands of triangles per frame. Our method, dubbed Real-time Optimally Adapting Meshes (ROAM), uses two priority queues to drive split and merge operations that maintain continuous triangulations built from preprocessed bintree triangles. We introduce two additional performance optimizations: incremental triangle stripping and prioritycomputation deferral lists. ROAM execution time is proportionate to the number of triangle changes per frame, which is typically a few percent of the output mesh size, hence ROAM performance is insensitive to the resolution and extent of the input terrain. Dynamic terrain and simple vertex morphing are supported.

This paper surveys methods for simplifying and approximating polygonal surfaces. A polygonal surface is a piecewiselinear surface in 3-D defined by a set of polygons

Solid objects in the real world do not pass through each other when they collide. Enforcing this property of "solidness" is important in many interactive graphics applications; for example, solidness makes virtual reality more believable, and solidness is essential for the correctness of vehicle simulators. These applications use a collision-detection algorithm to enforce the solidness of objects. Unfortunately, previous collision-detection algorithms do not adequately address the needs of interactive applications. To work in these applications, a collision-detection algorithm must run at real-time rates, even when many objects can collide, and it must tolerate objects whose motion is specified "on the fly" by a user. This dissertation describes a new collision-detection algorithm that meets these criteria through approximation and graceful degradation, elements of time-critical computing. The algorithm is not only fast but also interruptible, allowing an application to trade accuracy ...

We propose the idea of simplification envelopes for generating a hierarchy of level-of-detail approximations for a given polygonal model. Our approach guarantees that all points of an approximation are within a user-specifiable distance # from the original model and that all points of the original model are within a distance # from the approximation. Simplificationenvelopes provide a general framework within which a large collection of existing simplification algorithms can run. We demonstrate this technique in conjunction with two algorithms, one local, the other global. The local algorithm provides a fast method for generating approximations to large input meshes (at least hundreds of thousands of triangles). The global algorithm provides the opportunity to avoid local "minima" and possibly achieve better simplifications as a result. Each approximation attempts to minimize the total number of polygons required to satisfy the above # constraint. The key advantages of our approach are...

Several algorithms for approximating terrains and other height fields using polygonal meshes are described, compared, and optimized. These algorithms take a height field as input, typically a rectangular grid of elevation data H(x; y), and approximate it with a mesh of triangles, also known as a triangulated irregular network, or TIN. The algorithms attempt to minimize both the error and the number of triangles in the approximation. Applications include fast rendering of terrain data for flight simulation and fitting of surfaces to range data in computer vision. The methods can also be used to simplify multi-channel height fields such as textured terrains or planar color images. The most successful method we examine is the greedy insertion algorithm. It begins with a simple triangulation of the domain and, on each pass, finds the input point with highest error in the current approximation and inserts it as a vertex in the triangulation. The mesh is updated either with Delaunay triangul...

In many applications the need for an accurate simplification of surface meshes is becoming more and more urgent. This need is not only due to rendering speed reasons, but also to allow fast transmission of 3D models in network-based applications. Many different approaches and algorithms for mesh simplification have been proposed in the last few years. We present a survey and a characterization of the fundamental methods. Moreover, the results of an empirical comparison of the simplification codes available in the public domain are discussed. Five implementations, chosen to give a wide spectrum of different topology-preserving methods, were run on a set of sample surfaces. We compared empirical computational complexities and the approximation accuracy of the resulting output meshes. 1 Introduction Triangles are the most popular drawing primitive. They are managed by all graphics libraries and hardware subsystems, and triangular meshes are thus very common in computer graphics. Very c...

For twenty years, it has been clear that many datasets are excessively complex for applications such as real-time display, and that techniques for controlling the level of detail of models are crucial. More recently, there has been considerable interest in techniques for the automatic simplification of highly detailed polygonal models into faithful approximations using fewer polygons. Several effective techniques for the automatic simplification of polygonal models have been developed in recent years. This report begins with a survey of the most notable available algorithms. Iterative edge contraction algorithms are of particular interest because they induce a certain hierarchical structure on the surface. An overview of this hierarchical structure is presented,including a formulation relating it to minimum spanning tree construction algorithms. Finally, we will consider the most significant directions in which existing simplification methods can be improved, and a summary of o...

Polygonal simplification, a.k.a. level of detail, is an important tool for anyone doing interactive rendering, but how is a developer to choose among the dozens of published algorithms? This article surveys the field from a developer's point of view, attempting to identify the issues in picking an algorithm, relate the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, and describe a number of published algorithms as examples.

Despite recent advances in rendering hardware, large and complex virtual environments cannot be displayed with a sufficiently high frame rate, because of limitations in the available rendering performance. This paper presents a new approach of software accelerated rendering which draws from the concepts of impostors, hierarchical scene subdivision and levels of detail. So far software optimization in real-time rendering has merely considered individual objects. This work is actually optimizing the rendering of the whole virtual environment by implementing a three dimensional image cache. It speeds up rendering for large portions of the scene by exploiting the coherence inherent in any smooth frame sequence. The implementation of the three dimensional image cache is discussed and the savings in rendering load achievable on a suitable hardware platform are presented. Keywords: viewing algorithms, geometric algorithms, object hierarchies, virtual reality. 1 Introduction The basic capab...