Abstract

Figure 1: Two scenes rendered interactively over a broadband network on commodity hardware. (Left and center) A 25-billion polygon, 10,000 km 2 Earth-like scene. (Right) A fully three-dimensional scene with 3 billion polygons. This paper presents a system for interactive exploration of massive, detailed virtual environments over a broadband network. We build upon the hierarchical image-based framework pioneered by Shade et al. [1996] and Schaufler and Stürzlinger [1996], introducing key adaptations for scalability. A cluster of servers maintain a hierarchy of depth images of bounded regions of the scene. A client displays the scene using a logarithmic set of depth images that can be maintained under constant bandwidth independent of scene size. We report on techniques used to overcome the daunting visual quality issues encountered with image-based rendering of general unstructured scenes with billions of polygons on commodity hardware over a wide-area network. Experimental results are reported on scenes that exemplify the extreme demands of large-scale online worlds.

Citations