Chajdas, Matthäus G.Reichl, FlorianDick, ChristianWestermann, RüdigerB. Bickel and T. Ritschel2015-04-152015-04-152015https://doi.org/10.2312/egsh.20151014Rendering of large, detailed 3D terrains on commodity hardware has become possible through the use of raycasting, data caching and prefetching. Adding dynamic shadows as they appear during a day-night cycle remais a challenge however, because shadow rendering requires access to the entire terrain, invalidating data streaming strategies. In this work we present a novel, practicable shadow rendering approach which distinguishes between near- and precomputed far-shadows to significantly reduce data access and runtime costs. While near-shadows are raytraced using the current cache content, far-shadows are precomputed and stored in a very compact format requiring approximately 3 bit per height-map sample for an entire day-night cycle.I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]Three Dimensional Graphics and RealismColorshadingshadowingand texture10.2312/egsh.2015101457-60