Chapter 6. Hardware Occlusion Queries Made Useful
Michael WimmerVienna University of Technology
Jirí BittnerVienna University of Technology
Introduction
Hardware occlusion queries were one of the most eagerly awaited graphics hardware features in a long time. This feature makes it possible for an application to ask the 3D API (OpenGL or Direct3D) whether or not any pixels would be drawn if a particular object were rendered. With this feature, applications can check whether or not the bounding boxes of complex objects are visible; if the bounds are occluded, the application can skip drawing those objects. Hardware occlusion queries are appealing to today’s games because they work in completely dynamic scenes.
However, although this feature has been ...
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