Level of Detail for 3D Graphics
Authors: David Luebke, Benjamin Watson, Jonathan D. Cohen, Martin Reddy, Amitabh Varshney
Venue:  (2002)

:Level of detail (LOD) techniques are increasingly used by professional real-time developers to strike the balance between breathtaking virtual worlds and smooth, flowing animation. Level of Detail for 3D Graphics brings together, for the first time, the mechanisms, principles, practices, and theory needed by every graphics developer seeking to apply LOD methods. Continuing advances in level of detail management have brought this powerful technology to the forefront of 3D graphics optimization research. This book, written by the very researchers and developers who have built LOD technology, is both a state-of-the-art chronicle of LOD advances and a practical sourcebook, which will enable graphics developers from all disciplines to apply these formidable techniques to their own work. Features Is a complete, practical resource for programmers wishing to incorporate LOD technology into their own systems. Is an important reference for professionals in game development, computer animation, information visualization, real-time graphics and simulation, data capture and preview, CAD display, and virtual worlds. Is accessible to anyone familiar with the essentials of computer science and interactive computer graphics. Covers the full range of LOD methods from mesh simplification to error metrics, as well as advanced issues of human perception, temporal detail, and visual fidelity measurement. Includes an accompanying Web site rich in supplementary material including source code, tools, 3D models, public domain software, documentation, LOD updates, and more. Author Biography:David Luebke David is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Virginia. His principal research interest is the problem of rendering very complex scenes at interactive rates. His research focuses on software techniques such as polygonal simplification and occlusion culling to reduce the complexity of such scenes to manageable levels. Luebke's dissertation research, summarized in a SIGGRAPH '97 paper, introduced a dynamic, view-dependent approach to polygonal simplification for interactive rendering of extremely complex CAD models. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina, and his Bachelors degree at the Colorado College. Martin Reddy Martin is a Senior Computer Scientist at SRI International where he works in the area of terrain visualization. This work involves the real-time display of massive terrain databases that are distributed over wide-area networks. His research interests include level of detail, visual perception, and computer graphics. His doctoral research involved the application of models of visual perception to real-time computer graphics systems, enabling the selection of level of detail based upon measures of human perception. He received his B.Sc. from the University of Strathclyde and his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh, UK. He is on the Board of Directors of the Web3D Consortium and chair of the GeoVRML Working Group. Jonathan D. Cohen Jon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at The Johns Hopkins University. He earned his Doctoral and Masters degrees from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned his Bachelors degree from Duke University. His interests include polygonal simplification and other software acceleration techniques, parallel rendering architectures, collision detection, and high-quality interactive computer graphics. Amitabh Varshney Amitabh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland. His research interests lie in interactive computer graphics, scientific visualization, molecular graphics, and CAD. Varshney has worked on several aspects of level-of-detail simplifications including topology-preserving and topology-reducing simplifications, view-dependent simplifications, parallelization of simplification computation, as well as using triangle strips in multiresolution rendering. Varshney received his PhD and MS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1994 and 1991 respectively. He received his B. Tech. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology at Delhi in 1989. Benjamin Watson Ben is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at Northwestern University. He earned his doctoral and Masters degrees at Georgia Tech's GVU Center, and his Bachelors degree at the University of California, Irvine. His dissertation focused on user performance effects of dynamic level of detail management. His other research interests include object simplification, medical applications of virtual reality, and 3D user interfaces. Robert Huebner Robert is the Director of Technology at Nihilistic Software, an independent development studio located in Marin County, California. Prior to co-founding Nihilistic, Robert has worked on a number of successful game titles including "Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2" for LucasArts Entertainment, "Descent" for Parallax Software, and "Starcraft" for Blizzard Entertainment. Nihilistic's first title, "Vampire The Masquerade: Redemption" was released for the PC in 2000 and sold over 500,000 copies worldwide. Nihilistic's second project will be released in the Winter of 2002 on next-generation game consoles. Robert has spoken on game technology topics at SIGGRAPH, the Game Developer's Conference (GDC), and Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). He also serves on the advisory board for the Game Developer's Conference and the International Game Developer's Association (IGDA). Robert's e-mail address is .