High-Performance GPU based Planetary-Scale Terrain Visualization

High-performance visualization of planetary-scale multi-resolution terrain for high-fidelity display systems is a challenging task. Real-world terrain visualization requires real-time modeling and rendering of the large-scale multi-resolution model. This work proposes a novel method for high-performance multi-resolution terrain modeling and rendering using hardware tessellation. The proposed method submits patch primitives using geometry instancing for high-performance. Patch Level-of-detail (LOD) is simplified using a view-dependent simplification algorithm with error control. The proposed simplification algorithm simplifies the model using viewer information and local height variation for optimum triangulation. Patch simplified LOD is tessellated utilizing a fixed-function tessellator. Height grid-aligned post-tessellated vertices are displaced in 3D to construct accurate high-frequency surface details. Finally, multi-resolution satellite imagery and normal maps are utilized for real-world features display. We evaluated the proposed method for high display resolutions and achieved high rendering rate. The proposed method results are compared with clipmap-based and hardware tessellation based methods.