Computing the Approximate Visibility Map, with Applications
to Form Factors and Discontinuity Meshing

A. James Stewart and Tasso Karkanis

Abstract

This paper describes a robust, hardware-accelerated algorithm to compute an approximate visibility map, which describes the visible scene from a particular viewpoint. The user can control the degree of approximation, choosing more accuracy at the cost of increased execution time. The algorithm exploits item buffer hardware to coarsely determine visibility, which is later refined. The paper also describes a conceptually simple algorithm to compute a subset of the discontinuity mesh using the visibility map.

Key words: approximate visibility, visibility map, discontinuity meshing, hardware assisted, occlusion culling, form factor, item buffer

The Paper

360 Kb compressed Postscript file

@article{Stewart-tvcg97,
  author  = "A. James Stewart and Tasso Karkanis",
  title   = "Computing the approximate visibility map, with
             applications to form factors and discontinuity meshing",
  journal = "Eurographics Workshop on Rendering",
  year    = "1998",
  pages   = "57--68",
  month   = "June"
}