NPSNET - HIERARCHICAL DATA-STRUCTURES FOR REAL-TIME 3-DIMENSIONAL VISUAL SIMULATION

3D visual simulation systems must present a world, including terrain, cultural features, and 3D icons, in real-time at a level of detail that supports the use for which the system is intended. A ''simple'' world lends itself to blasting all the polygons through the workstation's existing graphics pipeline. However, a ''simple'' world is not very realistic and/or does not operate in real-time. For complex worlds, such as that modeled in NPSNET, providing high fidelity in real-time requires the use of hierarchical data structures. We explore the implementation of such a structure on the world modeled by NPSNET utilizing quadtrees.