Real-time terrain surface extraction at variable resolution

Abstract

Multiresolution terrain models allow the extraction of the surface at different levels of details. Real terrain data is large enough to prevent real time walk through at a reasonable level of detail. Moreover, a coarse view of a terrain may not attend some application requirements. Therefore extracting the surface at variable resolution may offer impressive good looking views if, for instance, regions closer to the observer are shown at a higher resolution then regions farther away. Besides, variable resolution extraction dramatically reduces the number of polygons to be rendered allowing real time walk through of a large terrain model. The paper proposes a multiresolution terrain model, based on Delaunay triangulation, that takes into account the whole domain during triangulation without replicating unchanged triangles through different levels of detail. The proposed model is the first that matches a whole domain Delaunay triangulation with accuracy of extraction and low storage cost algorithms.