Two-level hierarchical Z-buffer with compression technique for 3D graphics hardware

The hierarchical Z-buffer is application-invisible and more efficient than the traditional Z-buffer for quickly rejecting hidden geometries. But there are construction and management issues associated with integrating a hierarchical Z-buffer into current graphics hardware. Here we present a two-level hierarchical Z-buffer algorithm, and provide solutions to these issues. Simulation results show that the bandwidth can be reduced by up to 35%. Moreover we propose a dynamic bi-level HZ-buffer compression technique that reduces the buffer size up by to 40%, and for which there is little performance degradation.