An Incremental LOD Method Based on Grid and Its Application in Distributed Terrain Visualization

Incremental LOD can be transmitted on the network as a stream, then users on the clients can easily catch the skeleton of terrain without downloading all the data from the server. Detailed information in a local part can be added gradually when users zoom it in without redundant data transmission in this procedure. To do this, an incremental LOD method is put forward according to the regular arrangement of grid. This method applies arbitrary sized grid terrains and is not restricted to square ones with a side measuring 2(k) + 1 samples. Maximum height errors are recorded when the LOD is preproeessed and it can be visualized with the geometrical Mipmaps to reduce the screen error.