Extending graphics hardware for occlusion queries in OpenGL

Abstract

For interactive rendering of large polygonal objects, fast visibility queries are necessary to quickly decide whether polygonal objects are visible and need to be rendered. None of the numerous published algorithms provide visibility performance for interactive rendering of large models. In this paper, we propose an OpenGL extension for fast occlusion queries. Added after the depth test stage of the OpenGL rendering pipeline, our algorithm provides fast queries to establish the occlusion of polygonal objects. Furthermore, hardware aspects of this proposal are discussed and possible implementations on two different graphics architectures are presented.