Texturing techniques for terrain visualization

We present a new rendering technique for processing multiplemultiresolution textures of LOD terrain models and describe itsapplication to interactive, animated terrain content design. Theapproach is based on a multiresolution model for terrain texturewhich cooperates with a multiresolution model for terrain geometry.For each texture layer, an image pyramid and a texture treeare constructed. Multiple texture layers can be associated with oneterrain model and can be combined in different ways, e.g., byblending and masking. The rendering algorithm traverses simultaneouslythe geometry multiresolution model and the texture multiresolutionmodel, and takes into account geometric and textureapproximation errors. It uses multi-pass rendering and exploitsmultitexturing to achieve real-time performance. Applicationsinclude interactive texture lenses, texture animation, and topographictextures. These techniques offer an enormous potential fordeveloping new visualization applications for presenting, exploringand manipulating spatio-temporal data.