View-Dependent Out-of-Core Rendering of Large-Scale Virtual Environments with Continuous Hierarchical Levels of Detail

We present a new method for view-dependent out-of-core rendering of large-scale virtual environments at interactive rates. We represent the model using a scene graph hierarchy and construct continuous hierarchical levels of detail (CHLOD) for each hierarchical node. The CHLOD of a node is computed by a view-dependent simplification method which can support topological structure modification. At run-time, the hierarchy is used for coarse global refinement, and the CHLODs are used for fine local refinement. We have implemented our method on a common PC with standard graphics hardware. Experimental results show that the system can perform interactive rendering of large-scale virtual environments with fine image quality and minimal popping artifacts.