Monte carlo ray tracing algorithm for rendering virtual geographical environment

摘要

Virtual Geographical Environment (VGE) is increasingly important in current GIS area. A common trend in rendering VGE is to request more realistic images of complex three-dimensional geo-spatial models. Monte Carlo ray tracing based techniques are the only methods that can handle such complexity. Recent advances in algorithms and compute power has made Monte Carlo ray tracing the natural choice for most problems. This paper discusses the fundamental theories of Monte Carlo ray tracing method together with the implementation for applying Monte Carlo ray tracing to render VGEs, especially dealing with the construction of 3D triangle mesh models that usually be used in architecture modeling. By testing the performance of the algorithm, it is proved that Monte Carlo ray tracing method is suitable for VGE model rendering process, expecting more realistic effects than the conventional 3D rendering.