Partial Visibility for Virtual Reality Applications

This paper presents new approximated visibility algorithms. The aim is to develop output sensitive algorithms for virtual environment walk-through applications. We aim to achieve efficient rendering of complex computer models containing partially occluded areas. Emphasis is paid to the rendering of natural environment models. The algorithms presented in this paper perform visibility calculations in a plane, these algorithms have a more general 3D analogy which has many practical applications within the field of virtual environments. The algorithms presented here have been used with minor extensions to be applied to 2.5D ground based virtual environment walk-throughs