Effective techniques for interactive rendering of global terrain surfaces

Global terrain visual systems must support real-time visualization and manipulation of huge multiresolution geographical datasets. In this letter, we focus on certain key techniques, such as construction of three-dimensional (3-D) ellipsoidal models, spatial indexing mechanisms, interactive terrain datasets simplification by the M-band wavelets and triangulation techniques, and surface browsing from different view directions. Finally, an experiment is carried out using different levels of detail data; our results suggest that the methods are effective in enhancing performance of a 3-D global visual system.