J. Edward Swan II

Interactive, Distributed, Hardware-Accelerated LOD-Sprite Terrain Rendering with Stable Frame Rates

J. Edward Swan II, Jesus Arango, and Bala Nakshatrala. Interactive, Distributed, Hardware-Accelerated LOD-Sprite Terrain Rendering with Stable Frame Rates. In R. Erbacher, P. Chen, M. Gröhn, J. Roberts, and C. Wittenbrink, editors, Visualization and Data Analysis 2002, Proceedings of SPIE Volume 4665, pp. 177–188, January 2002.

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Abstract

A stable frame rate is important for interactive rendering systems. Image-based modeling and rendering (IBMR) techniques, which model parts of the scene with image sprites, are a promising technique for interactive systems because they allow the sprite to be manipulated instead of the underlying scene geometry. However, with IBMR techniques a frequent problem is an unstable frame rate, because generating an image sprite (with 3D rendering) is time-consuming relative to manipulating the sprite (with 2D image resampling). This paper describes one solution to this problem, by distributing an IBMR technique into a collection of cooperating threads and executable programs across two computers. The particular IBMR technique distributed here is the LOD-Sprite algorithm. This technique uses a multiple level-of-detail (LOD) scene representation. It first renders a keyframe from a high-LOD representation, and then caches the frame as an image sprite. It renders subsequent spriteframes by texture-mapping the cached image sprite into a lower-LOD representation. We describe a distributed architecture and implementation of LOD-Sprite, in the context of terrain rendering, which takes advantage of graphics hardware. We present timing results which indicate we have achieved a stable frame rate. In addition to LOD-Sprite, our distribution method holds promise for other IBMR techniques.

BibTeX

@InCollection{VDA02-lods, 
  author =      {J. Edward {Swan~II} and Jesus Arango and Bala Nakshatrala}, 
  title =       {Interactive, Distributed, Hardware-Accelerated LOD-Sprite 
                 Terrain Rendering with Stable Frame Rates}, 
  booktitle =   {Visualization and Data Analysis 2002, Proceedings of SPIE Volume 4665}, 
  editor =      {R. Erbacher and P. Chen and M. Gr\"{o}hn and J. Roberts and 
                 C. Wittenbrink}, 
  month =       {January}, 
  year =        2002, 
  pages =       {177--188}, 
  abstract =    { 
A stable frame rate is important for interactive rendering systems. 
Image-based modeling and rendering (IBMR) techniques, which model 
parts of the scene with image sprites, are a promising technique for 
interactive systems because they allow the sprite to be manipulated 
instead of the underlying scene geometry.  However, with IBMR 
techniques a frequent problem is an unstable frame rate, because 
generating an image sprite (with 3D rendering) is time-consuming 
relative to manipulating the sprite (with 2D image resampling).  This 
paper describes one solution to this problem, by distributing an IBMR 
technique into a collection of cooperating threads and executable 
programs across two computers. 
The particular IBMR technique distributed here is the LOD-Sprite 
algorithm.  This technique uses a multiple level-of-detail (LOD) scene 
representation.  It first renders a keyframe from a high-LOD 
representation, and then caches the frame as an image sprite.  It 
renders subsequent spriteframes by texture-mapping the cached image 
sprite into a lower-LOD representation.  We describe a distributed 
architecture and implementation of LOD-Sprite, in the context of 
terrain rendering, which takes advantage of graphics hardware.  We 
present timing results which indicate we have achieved a stable frame 
rate.  In addition to LOD-Sprite, our distribution method holds 
promise for other IBMR techniques. 
}, 
}