Coherent Hierarchical Culling: Hardware Occlusion Queries Made Useful

Information

• Publication Type: Journal Paper with Conference Talk
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • UrbanViz
• Date: September 2004
• Journal: Computer Graphics Forum
• Volume: 23
• Number: 3
• Note: Proceedings EUROGRAPHICS 2004
• Location: Grenoble, France
• Lecturer: Michael Wimmer
• ISSN: 0167-7055
• Event: EUROGRAPHICS 2004
• Conference date: 30. August 2004 – 3. September 2004
• Pages: 615 – 624
• Keywords: occlusion query, visibility, real-time rendering, occlusion culling

Abstract

We present a simple but powerful algorithm for optimizing the usage of hardware occlusion queries in arbitrary complex scenes. Our method minimizes the number of issued queries and reduces the delays due to the latency of query results. We reuse the results of the occlusion queries from the last frame in order to initiate and schedule the queries in the next frame. This is done by processing nodes of a spatial hierarchy in front-to-back order, interleaving occlusion queries with the rendering of certain previously visible nodes. The proposed scheduling of the queries makes use of spatial and temporal coherence of visibility. Despite its simplicity, the algorithm achieves good culling efficiency for scenes of various characteristics. The implementation of the algorithm is straightforward, and it can be easily integrated in existing real-time rendering packages using various spatial data structures.

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BibTeX

@article{Bittner-2004-CHC,
  title =      "Coherent Hierarchical Culling: Hardware Occlusion Queries
               Made Useful",
  author =     "Jir\'{i} Bittner and Michael Wimmer and Harald Piringer and
               Werner Purgathofer",
  year =       "2004",
  abstract =   "We present a simple but powerful algorithm for optimizing
               the usage of hardware occlusion queries in arbitrary complex
               scenes. Our method minimizes the number of issued queries
               and reduces the delays due to the latency of query results.
               We reuse the results of the occlusion queries from the last
               frame in order to initiate and schedule the queries in the
               next frame. This is done by processing nodes of a spatial
               hierarchy in front-to-back order, interleaving occlusion
               queries with the rendering of certain previously visible
               nodes. The proposed scheduling of the queries makes use of
               spatial and temporal coherence of visibility. Despite its
               simplicity, the algorithm achieves good culling efficiency
               for scenes of various characteristics. The implementation of
               the algorithm is straightforward, and it can be easily
               integrated in existing real-time rendering packages using
               various spatial data structures.",
  month =      sep,
  journal =    "Computer Graphics Forum",
  volume =     "23",
  number =     "3",
  note =       "Proceedings EUROGRAPHICS 2004",
  issn =       "0167-7055",
  pages =      "615--624",
  keywords =   "occlusion query, visibility, real-time rendering, occlusion
               culling",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2004/Bittner-2004-CHC/",
}