Using a Floating Origin to Improve Fidelity and Performance of Large, Distributed Virtual Worlds

Large Virtual Worlds (VWs) are increasingly common in the computer graphics areas of simulation, games, geospatial or scientific visualisation. In such VWs, simulated motion of the viewpoint and other objects becomes jittery and lacking in realism when far from the world's origin. Shape and appearance of objects can also degenerate. Since these effects depend on position in space, they will be collectively termed Spatial Jitter (SJ). Traditional solutions to SJ embody the idea that viewpoint motion through the VW must involve a change of the viewpoint's coordinates. This notion of viewpoint motion increases design complexity and the processing overhead of code written to counter SJ. A Floating Origin (FO) approach is presented which floats the world's origin with the viewpoint when navigating a continuous VW, eliminating SJ effects and lowering design and processing overheads. It ensures constant high fidelity in contrast to the continuously varying fidelity of conventional solutions.