Research Evolvement of Large Scale Terrain Visualization Algorithm

In recent years, large-scale three-dimensional terrain visualization is indispensable to outdoor environment simulation and a surge of research in the area of visualization. It is widely applicable for games, simulators, visual realization, GIS and other areas. This paper discussed research methods of many scholars and new research evolvement and some issues that still exist in terrain visualization area. On both data fitting and model simplification sides, these methods of adaptive terrain visualization modeling are described. According to be friendly for modern graphics hardware or not, these terrain model simplification algorithms are divided into CPU oriented fine granularity LOD and GPU oriented coarse granularity LOD algorithm, as well as, this paper described space-time discontinuity problems, their various settlements and out-of-core technology that supports large-scale datasets. Finally, it is summarized and analyzed that the development current and future research emphasis in the terrain visualization modeling area.