SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ASPECTS OF OUT-OF-CORE DATA MANAGEMENT FOR PLANETARY TERRAIN

Cody J. White, Sergiu M. Dascalu, Frederick C. Harris, Jr.

2011

Abstract

Rendering terrain on a planetary scale can quickly become a large problem. Many challenges arise when attempting to render terrain over a spherical body as well as deal with the large amount of data that needs to be used to accurately display the terrain of a planet. Most research in the area of terrain rendering is specific to a given region of a planet, therefore needing few datasets for a proper rendering. However, since planets are made up of larger areas, a different approach needs to be taken in order to display high-detail terrain around a viewer while sorting through the large amount of planetary data available. Additionally, since modern desktops have a relatively small amount of memory, a system to swap data from the hard drive into graphics processing unit (GPU) memory must be created. Therefore, we present the software design for a data caching mechanism which can efficiently swap only the data around a viewer into and out of the GPU memory in real-time. We also present a prototype of the software which achieves efficient framerates for high-quality views of a planet’s surface while minimizing the time it takes to find data centered around a viewer and display it to the screen.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

J. White C., M. Dascalu S., C. Harris and Jr. F. (2011). SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ASPECTS OF OUT-OF-CORE DATA MANAGEMENT FOR PLANETARY TERRAIN . In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software and Database Technologies - Volume 2: ICSOFT, ISBN 978-989-8425-77-5, pages 185-191. DOI: 10.5220/0003509201850191

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icsoft11,
author={Cody J. White and Sergiu M. Dascalu and Frederick C. Harris, Jr.},
title={SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ASPECTS OF OUT-OF-CORE DATA MANAGEMENT FOR PLANETARY TERRAIN},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software and Database Technologies - Volume 2: ICSOFT,},
year={2011},
pages={185-191},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0003509201850191},
isbn={978-989-8425-77-5},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Software and Database Technologies - Volume 2: ICSOFT,
TI - SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT ASPECTS OF OUT-OF-CORE DATA MANAGEMENT FOR PLANETARY TERRAIN
SN - 978-989-8425-77-5
AU - J. White C.
AU - M. Dascalu S.
AU - C. Harris, Jr. F.
PY - 2011
SP - 185
EP - 191
DO - 10.5220/0003509201850191