Hardware assisted occlusion culling for scene graph systems [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Dirk Staneker

Hardware-assisted Occlusion Cullingfor Scene Graph SystemsDissertationder Fakulta¨t fu¨r Informations- und Kognitionswissenschaftender Eberhard-Karls-Universita¨t Tu¨bingenzur Erlangung des Grades einesDoktors der Naturwissenschaften(Dr. rer. nat.)vorgelegt vonDipl.-Inform. Dirk Stanekeraus ReutlingenTu¨bingen2005Tag der mu¨ndlichen Qualifikation: 25.01.2006Dekan: Prof. Dr. Michael Diehl1. Berichterstatter: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr.-Ing. E.h. Wolfgang Straßer2. Berichterstatter: Prof. Dr. Andreas SchillingAbstractThis thesis describes different aspects of occlusion culling algorithms for the effi-cient rendering of 3D scenes with rasterization hardware. Scene graphs are used asdata structures for the scenes to support a wide range of different applications. Allpresented algorithms permit modifications of the graphs at runtime and therefore thealgorithms are suitable for dynamic scenes.The thesis consists of three parts. The first part compares different techniquesto determine the visibility of a single scene graph node. All techniques have thesame characteristic in that they utilize the depth information on the graphics hard-ware in some way. Unfortunately, each access to the hardware requires some latency.Therefore the second part of this thesis presents some algorithms to reduce the num-ber of these accesses to the graphics hardware.