Title :
Stereoscopic view-dependent visualization of terrain height fields
Author :
Güdükbay, Ugur ; Yilmaz, Türker
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Eng., Bilkent Univ., Ankara, Turkey
Abstract :
Visualization of large geometric environments has always been an important problem of computer graphics. We present a framework for the stereoscopic view-dependent visualization of large scale terrain models. We use a quadtree based multiresolution representation for the terrain data. This structure is queried to obtain the view-dependent approximations of the terrain model at different levels of detail. In order not to lose depth information, which is crucial for the stereoscopic visualization, we make use of a different simplification criterion, namely, distance-based angular error threshold. We also present an algorithm for the construction of stereo pairs in order to speed up the view-dependent stereoscopic visualization. The approach we use is the simultaneous generation of the triangles for two stereo images using a single draw-list so that the view frustum culling and vertex activation is done only once for each frame. The cracking problem is solved using the dependency information stored for each vertex. We eliminate the popping artifacts that can occur while switching between different resolutions of the data using morphing. We implemented the proposed algorithms on personal computers and graphics workstations. Performance experiments show that the second eye image can be produced approximately 45 percent faster than drawing the two images separately and a smooth stereoscopic visualization can be achieved at interactive frame rates using continuous multiresolution representation of height fields
Keywords :
data visualisation; geophysics computing; image morphing; quadtrees; rendering (computer graphics); software performance evaluation; stereo image processing; computer graphics; continuous multiresolution representation; cracking problem; distance-based angular error threshold; graphics workstations; image morphing; interactive frame rates; large geometric environments; large scale terrain models; multiresolution rendering; performance experiments; personal computers; quadtree based multiresolution representation; simplification criterion; stereoscopic view-dependent visualization; terrain height field visualization; vertex activation; view frustum culling; Computer Society; Computer graphics; Data visualization; Geometry; Image resolution; Large-scale systems; Layout; Microcomputers; Rendering (computer graphics); Workstations;
Journal_Title :
Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TVCG.2002.1044519