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:
Apr. 11, 2006
Filed:
Aug. 08, 2001
Hansong Zhang, Mountain View, CA (US);
Hansong Zhang, Mountain View, CA (US);
Vicarious Visions, Inc., Troy, NY (US);
Abstract
A method, system, and computer program product are provided for visibility culling of terrain. A height field is perspective modulated. An occlusion height field is generated based on an orthographic height propagation of the perspective modulated height field. Graphics data is culled based on the generated occlusion height field. Texturing and blending operations can be used to accelerate the perspective modulation. A perspective modulation disk is used to modulate the first height field along radial slices from a viewpoint. Texture from a one-dimensional texture with distance values is mapped to the radial slices to obtain the perspective modulated height field. Generating an occlusion height field can also be carried out using texturing and blending and can be hardware-accelerated. According to a further feature, a shift disk or shift texture is used.