QAEB Tracing for Procedural Height Fields

A QAEB-traced multifractal terrain, with shadows

If one assumes that a certain error (e.g., pixel-sized) in the ray-surface intersection is acceptable, one can directly ray-trace a procedurally-defined height field. This amounts to a sort of limited displacement map. (I'm mostly intersted in terrains, so a height field is good enough for me.)

I wrote this up as a paper submission for SIGGRAPH 96. For now, you can see the QAEB technical sketch. The technical sketch was presented at SIGGRAPH 95.

Recently we've integrated the QAEB primitive into my version of the Optik ray tracer. Here's a QAEB-traced terrain with atmospheric effects.

A QAEB-traced terrain with aerial perspective simulating depth.

For kicks, you might try to fuse the stereo pair below. Here at home, I can stick my nose right up to the screen, concentrate the gaze of each eye on a certain feature, and draw slowly back to get an in-focus stereo view. It'll only work, methinks, if the pair comes up on your screen with a separation about the same as that between your eyes. (Works at this resolution on my monitor!)

A stereo pair of a QAEB-traced terrain.

Last Change: October 10, 1996