View-dependent continuous level-of-detail rendering of terrain model

Abstract

The level-of-detail modeling method is an effective approach for the interactive visualization of complex models. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical tree structure based on the fractal dimension to organize a 3D terrain mesh model and to realize view-dependent continuous level-of-detail rendering of terrain data with a restricted quadtree triangulation method. The total algorithm can be divided into two stages: pre-processing and rendering. In pre-processing, it builds an adaptive hierarchical structure by considering the flatness of the terrain surface evaluated by the fractal dimension. Then it can generate a triangular approximation mesh by dynamically determining preserved data points according to the view-related parameters and performing a restricted quadtree triangulation. Some experiments demonstrate that it is simple and efficient and can be used to support the interactive dynamic rendering of terrain models.