Chapter 36. Visibility Determination
36.1. Introduction
Determining the visible parts of surfaces is a fundamental graphics problem. It arises naturally in rendering because rendering objects that are unseen is both inefficient and incorrect. This problem is called either visible surface determination or hidden surface removal, depending on the direction from which it is approached.
The two distinct goals for visibility are algorithm correctness and efficiency. A visibility algorithm responsible for the correctness of rendering must exactly determine whether an unobstructed line of sight exists between two points, or equivalently, the set of all points to which one point has an unobstructed line of sight. The most intuitive application is primary ...
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