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Abstract

This paper presents a GPU-based, fast, and accurate dynamic height field
rendering technique that scales well to large scale height fields. Current
real-time rendering algorithms for dynamic height fields employ approximate
ray-height field intersection methods, whereas accurate algorithms require
pre-computation in the order of seconds to minutes and are thus not suitable
for dynamic height field rendering. We alleviate this problem by using maximum
mipmaps, a hierarchical data structure supporting accurate and efficient
rendering while simultaneously lowering the pre-computation costs to negligible
levels. Furthermore, maximum mipmaps allow for view-dependent level-of-detail
rendering. In combination with hierarchical ray-stepping this results in an
efficient intersection algorithm for large scale height fields.