Mobility culling: an efficient rendering algorithm using temporal coherence

Interactive display of complex scenes is a challenging problem in computer graphics. Stich current approaches as z-buffer, level of detail and visibility culling have not fully used the temporal coherence between consecutive frames. When the viewing condition is fixed, the color and depth values of static polygons can be obtained from the result of the previous frame and only the remaining dynamic polygons require rendering. We present a method that enhances the speed of the conventional z-buffer algorithm by exploiting the above temporal coherence. This algorithm is simple to combine with existing graphics hardware that supports the conventional z-buffer algorithm. It can manipulate any scene suitable for the z-buffer algorithm without preprocessing or human intervention. The rendering time is proportional to the number of dynamic polygons in each frame. Experimental results show that our method is faster than the conventional z-buffer algorithm and the performance enhancement becomes higher as the fraction of static polygons increases. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.