An efficient simplification and real-time rendering algorithm for large-scale terrain

Aiming at simplifying and real-time rendering of large-scale terrain, the whole terrain is first divided into terrain blocks, and for each block, feature points are picked out to generate a Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN) model. Then, the hierarchical multi-resolution model of the terrain is created in a bottom-to-up mode. Cracks between terrain blocks can be easily remedied by boundary sharing. At run-time, whether a terrain block is to be rendered or not depends both on its isotropic error metric and the result of view frustum culling. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs efficiently.