3D Engine Design for Virtual Globes

Supported with code examples and the authors’ real-world experience, this book offers the first guide to engine design and rendering algorithms for virtual globe applications like Google Earth and NASA World Wind. The content is also useful for general graphics and games, especially planet and massive-world engines. With pragmatic advice throughout, it is essential reading for practitioners, researchers, and hobbyists in these areas, and can be used as a text for a special topics course in computer graphics.

Topics covered include:

• Rendering globes, planet-sized terrain, and vector data
• Multithread resource management
• Out-of-core algorithms
• Shader-based renderer design

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Math Foundations
Chapter 3. Renderer Design
Chapter 4. Globe Rendering
Chapter 5. Vertex Transform Precision
Chapter 6. Depth Buffer Precision
Chapter 7. Vector Data and Polylines
Chapter 8. Polygons
Chapter 9. Billboards
Chapter 10. Exploiting Parallelism in Resource Preparation
Chapter 11. Terrain Basics
Chapter 12. Massive-Terrain Rendering
Chapter 13. Geometry Clipmapping
Chapter 14. Chunked LOD
Appendix A. Implementing a Message Queue