Adapting ROAM for Use within a Games Application

Real-time Optimally Adapting Meshes (ROAM) is, and remains, a very popular algorithm for the rendering of terrain meshes within virtual environments. However, the method has received several critisms from developers of performance orientated applications, such as computer games, due to the algorithm’s bias towards accuracy over speed. Because of this, several variations of the ROAM method have appeared within the games industry, each adapting the algorithm to a form more suited to take advantage of graphics hardware optimizations, and thus speed. Although these variations produce faster results, they lose the “per-triangle” accuracy of ROAM, which can cause other problems and also exaggerate the tessellation side-effect known as “popping”. In this paper, a new variation of the ROAM algorithm is presented that aims to provide similar performance to these other variations, while retaining the accuracy of the original algorithm. Categories and Subject Descriptor