A study on numerical integration methods for rendering atmospheric scattering phenomenon

Abstract

A qualitative comparison of three, popular and most widely known numerical integration methods in terms of atmospheric single scattering calculations is presented. A comparison of Midpoint, Trapezoidal and Simpson’s Rules taking into account quality of a clear sky generated images is performed. Methods that compute the atmospheric scattering integrals use Trapezoidal Rule. Authors try to determine which numerical integration method is the best for determining the colors of the sky and check if Trapezoidal Rule is in fact the best choice. The research does not only conduct experiments with Bruneton’s framework but also checks which of the selected numerical integration methods is the most appropriate and gives the lowest error in terms of atmospheric scattering phenomenon.

Keywords

• atmospheric single scattering
• numerical integration
• integrals
• nonlinear light scattering
• gpu rendering
• 02.30.rz
• 42.68.-w