Patent ID: 7643024

Claim:
A method for managing a display space for a 3D scene comprising: determining the visible surfaces of a plurality of scene objects in a 3D scene from a particular view point, using a computer processor; representing the visible surfaces of the plurality of scene objects as visible space in a view-plane representation; defining at least one controllable object to be placed in the scene; for each controllable object, determining the available space in the view-plane representation; determining the placement of each controllable object in the 3D scene in accordance with at least one placement parameter related to perspective from the particular view point and the available space for the controllable object in the view-plane representation; and accordingly placing the objects in the display space to render the 3D scene from the perspective of the particular view point, wherein the at least one placement parameter includes a relationship to the position of the controllable object in a previous frame of the 3D scene, and wherein the relationship to the position of the controllable object in the previous frame includes temporal state hysteresis in which a settable timer interval is initiated when the position of the controllable object in the previous frame is not the same as its ideal position in the current frame and if at the end of the timer interval the current position of the controllable object is still not the ideal position, then the controllable object is moved to the ideal position so that the controllable object can be guaranteed to be a sustained minimum size at least once within the settable timer interval by displaying the controllable object at its largest possible size no greater than its maximum size only when there is enough space for the sustained minimum size, and removing the controllable object when it is below an absolute minimum size or if there is only enough display space for it within the absolute and sustained minimum sizes for time > settable timer interval.