Terrender: A Web-Based Multi-Resolution Terrain Rendering Framework

Terrain rendering is a fundamental requirement when visualizing 3D geographic data in various research, commercial or personal applications such as geographic information systems (GIS), 3D maps, simulators, and games. It entails handling large amounts of data for height and color as well as high-performance algorithms that can benefit from the parallel rendering power of GPUs. The main challenge is (1) to create a detailed renderable mesh using a fraction of the data that is most relevant to a specific camera position and orientation, and (2) to update this mesh in real time as the camera moves while keeping the transition artifacts low. Many algorithms have been proposed for adaptive adjustment of the level of detail (LOD) of large terrains. However, the existing web-based terrain rendering frameworks do not use state-of-the-art algorithms. As a result, these frameworks are prone to classic shortcomings of simpler terrain rendering algorithms such as discontinuities and limited visibility. We introduce a novel open-source web-based framework for rendering high quality terrains with adaptive LOD: Terrender. Terrender employs RASTeR, a modern LOD-based terrain rendering algorithm, while running smoothly with a limited bandwidth on all common web browsers, even on mobile devices. Finally, we present a thorough analysis of our system’s performance when the camera moves on a predefined trajectory. We also compare its performance and visual quality to another well-known framework.