Adaptive Real-Time Rendering of Planetary Terrains

Abstract

As virtual worlds applications get more and more demanding in terms of world complexity and rendering quality, rendering virtual terrains and planets in real-time introduces many challenges. In this paper, we provide a full-featured solution for rendering of arbitrary large terrain datasets in the context of client-server streaming. Our solution automatically adapts to arbitrary network bandwidths and client capabilities, ranging from high-end computers to mobile devices. We address the problem of rendering highly complex terrain databases comprising several hundred gigabytes of data, which therefore cannot be entirely loaded in memory nor rendered in real-time. The contributions of this paper solve important issues for high quality terrain rendering: adaptive texture mapping, inexpensive removal of geometry cracks and support of planetary terrains.