Fast Planetary Shadows using Fourier-Compressed Horizon Maps
| dc.contributor.author | Fritsch, Jonathan | en_US |
| dc.contributor.author | Schneegans, Simon | en_US |
| dc.contributor.author | Friederichs, Fabian | en_US |
| dc.contributor.author | Flatken, Markus | en_US |
| dc.contributor.author | Eisemann, Martin | en_US |
| dc.contributor.author | Gerndt, Andreas | en_US |
| dc.contributor.editor | Knoll, Aaron | en_US |
| dc.contributor.editor | Peters, Christoph | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-06-20T07:26:39Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-06-20T07:26:39Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Shadows on large-scale terrains are important for many applications, including video games and scientific visualization. Yet real-time rendering of realistic soft shadows at planetary scale is a challenging task. Notably, many shadowing algorithms require keeping significant amounts of extra terrain geometry in memory to account for out-of-frustum occluders. We present Fourier-Compressed Horizon Mapping, an enhancement of the horizon mapping algorithm which is able to circumvent this requirement and render shadows in a single render pass. For a given digital elevation model, we create a compact representation of each pixel's horizon profile and use it to render soft shadows at runtime. This representation is based on a truncated Fourier series stored in a multi-resolution texture pyramid and can be encoded in a single four-channel 32 bit floating point texture. This makes this approach especially suitable for applications using a level-of-detail system for terrain rendering. By using a compact representation in frequency space, compressed horizon mapping consistently creates more accurate shadows compared to traditional horizon maps of the same memory footprint, while still running well at real-time frame rates. | en_US |
| dc.description.sectionheaders | Real-Time Rendering | |
| dc.description.seriesinformation | High-Performance Graphics - Symposium Papers | |
| dc.identifier.doi | 10.2312/hpg.20251171 | |
| dc.identifier.isbn | 978-3-03868-291-2 | |
| dc.identifier.issn | 2079-8687 | |
| dc.identifier.pages | 10 pages | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://doi.org/10.2312/hpg.20251171 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://diglib.eg.org/handle/10.2312/hpg20251171 | |
| dc.publisher | The Eurographics Association | en_US |
| dc.rights | Attribution 4.0 International License | |
| dc.rights.uri | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ | |
| dc.subject | CCS Concepts: Computing methodologies → Rendering | |
| dc.subject | Computing methodologies → Rendering | |
| dc.title | Fast Planetary Shadows using Fourier-Compressed Horizon Maps | en_US |