We present an algorithm for performing adaptive real-time level-of-detail-based rendering for triangulated polygonal models. The simplifications are dependent on viewing direction, lighting, and visibility and are performed by taking advantage of image-space, object-space, and frame-to-frame coherences. In contrast to the traditional approaches of precomputing a fixed number of level-of-detail representations for a given object our approach involves statically generating a continuous level-ofdetail representation for the object. This representation is then used at run-time to guide the selection of appropriate triangles for display. The list of displayed triangles is updated incrementally from one frame to the next. Our approach is more effective than the current level-of-detail-based rendering approaches for most scientific visualization applications where there are a limited number of highly complex objects that stay relatively close to the viewer. Our approach is applicable for scalar (such as distance from the viewer) as well as vector (such as normal direction) attributes.

Virtual colonoscopy is a non-invasive computerized medical procedure for examining the entire colon to detect polyps. We present an interactive virtual colonoscopy method, which uses a physicallybased camera control model and a hardware-assisted visibility algorithm. By employing a potential field and rigid body dynamics, our camera control supplies a convenient and intuitive mechanism for examining the colonic surface while avoiding collisions. Our Zbuffer -assisted visibility algorithm culls invisible regions based on their visibility through a chain of portals, thus providing interactive rendering speed. We demonstrate our method with experimental results on a plastic pipe phantom, the Visible Human, and several patients. CR Categories: I.3.3 [Picture/Image Generation]: Display Algorithms; I.3.5 [Computational Geometry and Object Modeling]: Physically Based Modeling; I.3.6 [Methodologies and Techniques]: Interaction Techniques; I.3.7 [Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism ]: Hidde...

This paper describes the client-server design, implementation and experimental results for a system that supports real-time visual interaction between a large number of users in a shared 3D virtual environment. The key feature of the system is that server-based visibility algorithms compute potential visual interactions between entities representing users in order to reduce the number of messages required to maintain consistent state among many workstations distributed across a wide-area network. When an entity changes state, update messages are sent only to workstations with entities that can potentially perceive the change -- i.e., ones to which the update is visible. Initial experiments show a 40x decrease in the number of messages processed by client workstations during tests with 1024 entities interacting in a large densely occluded virtual environment. CR Categories and Subject Descriptors: [Computer Graphics]: I.3.7 Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism -- Virtual Reality. Add...

This paper investigates trade-offs of different network topologies and messaging protocols for multi-uservirtual environment systems. We present message distribution techniques appropriate for constructing scalable multi-user systems for a variety of network characteristics. Hierarchical system designs utilizing servers that manage message distribution for entities in separate regions of a virtual environment are described that scale to arbitrary numbers of simultaneous users. Experimental results show that the rate of messages processed by server workstations in this system design are less than using previously described approaches. 1. Introduction With the recent increases in network bandwidth and graphics performance in desktop computers, there is a growing interest in distributed visual simulation systems that allow multiple users to interact in a shared 3D virtual environment. Users on workstations connnected by a wide-area network run an interactive 3D graphics interface program...

Urban environments present unique challenges to interactive visualization systems, because of the huge complexity of the geometrical data and the widely varying visibility conditions. This paper introduces a new framework for real-time visualisation of such urban scenes. The central concept is that of a dynamic segmentation of the dataset, into a local three-dimensional model and a set of impostors used to represent distant scenery. A segmentation model is presented, based on inherent urban structure. A new impostor structure is introduced, derived from the level-of-detail approach. Impostors combine three-dimensional geometry to correctly model large depth discontinuities and parallax, and textures to rapidly display visual detail. We present the algorithms necessary for the creation of accurate and efficient three-dimensional impostors. The implementation of our algorithms allows interactive navigation in complex urban databases, as required by many applications.

We define the antiumbra and the antipenumbra of aconvex area light source shining through a sequence of convex areal holes in three dimensions. The antiumbra is the volume from which all points on the light source can be seen. The antipenumbra is the volume from which some, but not all, of the light source can be seen. We show that the antipenumbra is, in general, a disconnected set bounded by portions of quadric surfaces, and describe an implemented O(n 2 ) time algorithm that computes this boundary, where n is the total number of edges comprising the light source and holes. The antipenumbra computation is motivated by a visibility scheme in which we wish to determine the volume visible to an observer looking through a sequenceof transparent convex holes, or portals, connecting adjacent cells in a spatial subdivision. Knowledge of the antipenumbra should also prove useful for rendering shadowed objects. Finally, we have extended the algorithm to compute the planar and quadratic su...

Visualization of very complex scenes can be significantly accelerated using occlusion culling. In this paper we present a visibility preprocessing method which efficiently computes potentially visible geometry for volumetric viewing cells. We introduce novel extended projection operators, which permits efficient and conservative occlusion culling with respect to all viewpoints within a cell, and takes into account the combined occlusion effect of multiple occluders. We use extended projection of occluders onto a set of projection planes to create extended occlusion maps; we show how to efficiently test occludees against these occlusion maps to determine occlusion with respect to the entire cell. We also present an improved projection operator for certain specific but important configurations. An important advantage of our approach is that we can re-project extended projections onto a series of projection planes (via an occlusion sweep), and accumulate occlusion information from multiple blockers. This new approach allows the creation of effective occlusion maps for previously hard-to-treat scenes such as leaves of trees in a forest. Graphics hardware is used to accelerate both the extended projection and reprojection operations. We present a complete implementation demonstrating significant speedup with respect to view-frustum culling only, without the computational overhead of on-line occlusion culling.

Virtual environment research has focused on interactive image generation and has largely ignored acoustic modeling for spatialization of sound. Yet, realistic auditory cues can complement and enhance visual cues to aid navigation, comprehension, and sense of presence in virtual environments. A primary challenge in acoustic modeling is computation of reverberation paths from sound sources fast enough for real-time auralization. We have developed a system that uses precomputed spatial subdivision and "beam tree" data structures to enable real-time acoustic modeling and auralization in interactive virtual environments. The spatial subdivision is a partition of 3D space into convex polyhedral regions (cells) represented as a cell adjacency graph. A beam tracing algorithm recursively traces pyramidal beams through the spatial subdivision to construct a beam tree data structure representing the regions of space reachable by each potential sequence of transmission and specular reflection even...

While large investments are made in sophisticated graphics hardware, most realistic rendering is still performed off-line using ray trace or radiosity systems. A coordinated use of hardware-provided bitplanes and rendering pipelines can, however, approximate ray trace quality illumination effects in a user-interactive environment, as well as provide the tools necessary for a user to declutter such a complex scene. A variety of common ray trace and radiosity illumination effects are presented using multi-pass rendering in a pipeline architecture. We provide recursive reflections through the use of secondary viewpoints, and present a method for using a homogeneous 2-D projective image mapping to extend this method for refractive transparent surfaces. This paper then introduces the Dual Z-buffer, or DZ-buffer, an evolutionary hardware extension which, along with current framebuffer functions such as stencil planes and accumulation buffers, provides the hardware platform to render non-refr...

This paper presents an efficient algorithm for occlusion culling of urban environments. It is conservative and accurate in finding all significant occlusion. It discretizes the scene into view cells, for which cell-to-object visibility is precomputed, making on-line overhead negligible. Unlike other precomputation methods for view cells, it is able to conservatively compute all forms of occluder interaction for an arbitrary number of occluders. To speed up preprocessing, standard graphics hardware is exploited and occluder occlusion is considered. A walkthrough application running an 8 million polygon model of the city of Vienna on consumer-level hardware illustrates our results.