Stereoscopic urban visualization based on graphics processor unit

We propose a framework for the stereoscopic visualization of urban environments. The framework uses occlusion and view-frustum culling (VFC) and utilizes graphics hardware to speed up the rendering process. The occlusion culling is based on a slice-wise storage scheme that represents buildings using axis-aligned slices. This provides a fast and a low-cost way to access the visible parts of the buildings. View-frustum culling for stereoscopic visualization is carried out once for both eyes by applying a transformation to the culling location. Rendering using graphics hardware is based on the slice-wise building representation. The representation facilitates fast access to data that are pushed into the graphics procesing unit (GPU) buffers. We present algorithms to access this GPU data. The stereoscopic visualization uses off-axis projection, which we found more suitable for the case of urban visualization. The framework is tested on large urban models containing 7.8 million and 23 million polygons. Performance experiments show that real-time stereoscopic visualization can be achieved for large models. © 2008 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.