MIP mapping the virtual environment for computer games

Abstract

The paper describes how MIP-mapping and paging can be used to represent not only terrain imagery, but also terrain elevation. Previously the only things missing to implement Earth coverage were computing power, input/output bandwidth, graphics processing units (GPUs) and techniques to deal with large data sets. The article describes the rendering method that uses the GPU for most of the calculations. Modern graphics accelerators for personal computers allow you to solve problems that require the generation of images of the visual environment of photographic quality in real time. Highquality visualization of large continuous spaces of 3D vegetation is one of the requirements when creating most land transport simulators, as well as many virtual reality applications. Representation of large forest spaces in the form of free-standing tree models that have an acceptable visual quality for close-up display from the observer, it is impossible due to the huge number of primitives required for visualization. The article proposes use parallel calculations in GPU to accelerate rendering. We successfully integrated proposed visualization method into the standard rendering pipeline. For considered tests the application with GPU average ten times faster, than the version using only CPU. The proposed method takes into account the features of the architecture of modern GPUs and allows you to distribute the load on the display between the CPU and GPU. In this case, the method does not require significant resources for visualization. The implementation of the method showed that received speed in most cases is sufficient for the effective application of the method in computer games. The paper also proposes a method for high-quality visualization of large continuous spaces of 3D vegetation.