The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 03, 2002
Filed:
Oct. 09, 2001
Henry Sowizral, Los Altos, CA (US);
Karel Zikan, Seattle, WA (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
A system and method for performing visible object determination based upon a dual search of a cone hierarchy and a bounding (e.g. hull) hierarchy. Visualization software running on a host processor represents space with a hierarchy of cones constructed by recursive refinement, and represents a collection of objects with a hierarchy of bounding hulls. The visualization software searches the cone and hull hierarchies starting with the root cone and the root hull. Before exploring a given cone-hull pair, a cone-restricted minimum distance between the cone and the hull is measured and compared to the visibility distance value of the cone. Only when the former is smaller than the latter will the cone be searched against the hull.