3D Graphics Rendering and Terrain ModelingTechnology and Historical Overview

By Ricardo Veguilla

Terrain ModelerProject Status

Previously implemented features

Application developed in C and tested exclusively on SGI.

Terrain image loading tested with a 201x201 Matlab generated input file.

Terrain Modeling with OpenGL using points or unshaded polygons.

Fixed camera. Terrain rotation and scaling. Limited option for Level-of-detail

(LOD) rendering.

Newly Implemented Features Support for Autotools for cross-

platform development (currently tested on SGI and Linux).

Code modularization and refactoring.

Full virtual camera. Memory Manager subsystem for

monitoring memory utilization. Preliminary Lighting support. Preliminary support for rendering

multiple terrains.

Future Improvements

Full windowed application. Support for screen captures. Support for Land-marking (3D

bookmarks) Support for animation scripting

and recording. Support for simultaneous

rendering of multiple terrains.

Future Improvements (Cont.) Restructure code to accommodate

three module abstraction layers: IO Layer – Modules for reading and

writing terrain files of different formats. Sampling Layer – Modules implementing

different LOD algorithms with user-selected sampling value.

Rendering Layer – Modules for rendering the terrain using different OpenGL primitives, rendering attributes and vendor-optimized code paths.

Long-term Porting the project to Jogl: Java

OpenGL

http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/articles/jcanyon/

References: Wikipidia – The Free Encyclopedia

http://www.wikipedia.org/ OpenGL - The Industry Standard for High

Performance Graphics http://www.opengl.org/

Google Image Search http://images.google.com

Overview of 3D Interactive Graphics http://www.siggraph.org/project-grants/com97/

com97-tut.html Linux Journal - Industry of Change: Linux

Storms Hollywood http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5472

JCanyon - Grand Canyon Demo http://java.sun.com/products/jfc/tsc/articles/

jcanyon/