Common Vertex Buffer LOD: A Novel Discrete LOD Approach to Reducing Load Latency

Abstract

The level-of-detail (LOD) technique has been proved to be an effective technique in balancing the rendering efficiency and fidelity demands in the interactive 3D computer graphics applications. Among previously proposed geometric LOD techniques, the discrete, or static, LOD technique is the most adopted representation in real-time 3D graphics applications such as the virtual reality (VR) and 3D computer game. According to previous works, the discrete LOD representations usually suffers from the “popping effect” causing visual disturbance when switching LOD meshes; to cope with this, techniques such as geo-morphing and LOD blending were proposed. However, they either require additional efforts in converting underlying mesh representation or consume additional storage space or transmission cost. In this paper, we have proposed a novel LOD representation based on the concept of sharing a common vertex buffer among the various LOD meshes of a model. The novel LOD representation, called Common Vertex Buffer LOD, denoted as CVB-LOD, has the benefits of saving transmission and storage costs, lower mesh loading latency that effectively reduces the popping effect in switching LOD meshes.