Patent ID: 7525542

Claim:
A method for automatically generating near and far clipping planes for 3D scenes comprising the steps of: intersecting a plurality of bounding boxes of scene models with a viewing frustum to determine a range of depth that a particular scene occupies in the viewing frustum; setting a near clipping plane and a far clipping plane according to a set of scene bounds; analyzing a ratio of the near clipping plane to the far clipping plane to determine whether there is a desired level of numerical precision in a Z-buffer; and if the precision in the Z-buffer is not at the desired level, then adjusting the near clipping plane and the far clipping plane appropriately to achieve the desired level of numerical precision, wherein the ratio is calculated by first dividing the near clipping plane by the far clipping plane to determine a first result and then multiplying the first result by a value representing the desired level of numerical precision in the Z-buffer, wherein said steps are executed in a computing device.