A Hierarchical Triangulation for Multiresolution Terrain Models

Abstract

Interactive visualisation of triangulated terrain surfaces is still a problem for virtual reality systems. A polygonal model of very large terrain data requires a large number of triangles. The main problems are the representation rendering efficiency and the transmission over networks. The major challenge is to simplify a model while preserving its appearance. A multiresolution model represents different levels of detail of an object. We can choose the preferable level of detail according to the position of the observer to improve rendering and we can make a progressive transmission of the different levels. We propose a multiresolution triangulation scheme that eliminates the restrictions of the restricted quadtree triangulation and obtains better results.

Keywords

• multiresolution model
• terrain model
• level of detail
• quadtree subdivision
• hierarchical triangulation