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/