Adaptive BVH: an evaluation of an efficient shared data structure for interactive simulation

The strive towards realistic simulations at interactive speeds has driven research in both rendering and physical simulation. This heightened realism involves larger data sets and data structures, and comes at a high computational cost. We investigate simulations involving collision detection and real-time ray-tracing and note similarities in the data structures used to accelerate them. Our investigation demonstrates that it is possible to utilize a single Acceleration Data Structure (ADS) for both subsystems of an interactive simulation, even though they benefit from different characteristics. Typically, the collision detection and ray-tracing system build ADSs that satisfy their specific needs. We argue for a shared adaptive ADS that can be optimized for both collision detection and ray-tracing. The collision detection system builds this adaptive ADS and the ray-tracing algorithm uses the same adaptive ADS after the collision detection system has resolved potential collisions, therefore saving memory, execution time and power. The results show that compromises need not be made on build heuristics. Furthermore, the ADS may be optimized for primary and secondary rays and consequently save more memory, execution time and large quantities of power.