Variable-precision rendering

We propose the idea of using variable-precision geometry transformations and lighting to accelerate 3D graphics rendering. Multiresolution approaches reduce the numberof primitives to be rendered; our approach complements the multiresolution techniques as it reduces theprecisionof each graphics primitive. Our method relates the minimum number of bits of accuracy required in the input data to achieve a desired accuracy in the display output. We achieve speedup by taking advantage of (a) SIMD parallelism for arithmetic operations, now increasingly common on modern processors, and (b) spatial-temporal coherence in frame-to-frame transformations and lighting. We show the results of our method on datasets from several application domains including laser-scanned, procedural, and mechanical CAD datasets. CR Categories: I.3.3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation—Viewing algorithms; I.3.5 [Computer Graphics]: Computational Geometry and Object Modeling—Hierarchy and geometric transformations; I.3.6 [Computer Graphics]: Methodology and Techniques—Graphics data structures and data types. Additional