OpenGL-assisted occlusion culling for large polygonal models

We present an OpenGL-assisted visibility culling algorithm to improve the rendering performance of large polygonal models. Using a combination of hierarchical model-space partitioning, OpenGL-assisted view-frustum culling, and OpenGL-assisted occlusion culling, we achieve a significantly better performance on general polygonal models than previous approaches. In contrast to these approaches, we only exploit common OpenGL features and therefore, our algorithm is also well suited for low-end OpenGL graphics hardware. Furthermore, we propose a small addition to the OpenGL rendering pipeline to enhance the framebuffer’s ability for faster and more detailed occlusion queries.