Sprite tree: an efficient image-based representation for networked virtual environments

We propose a new and efficient image-based representation for networked virtual environments, called the sprite tree. A sprite tree organizes multiple reference images efficiently and compactly for accelerating the rendering of complex virtual scenes. Using our basic construction and rendering methods, the results show that a sprite tree can efficiently organize the pixels from hundreds of distinctive reference images and accelerate the rendering of a complex scene. Furthermore, we propose the sprite view similarity to (i) largely reduce the lighting artifacts in the rendered images, and (ii) significantly reduce the redundancy and the tree size with little loss of the visual quality.