Real-time rendering for massive terrain data using GPUs

Abstract

Real-time rendering for massive terrain data is a challenging work. Previous GPUs are not suitable for rendering massive mesh data. Recently, with tessellation shaders and geometry shader added on a GPU, it is possible to tessellate triangles or quad patches to improve geometrical features of mesh objects. In this paper, we propose a massive terrain rendering technique in real-time using GPUs. We made displacement and normal map from massive terrain data on the GPU. As a result, we could tessellate a coarse base mesh with a high resolution texture as displacement map and normal map for shading from massive terrain data.