src='/images/tex/27071.gif' alt='k^+'> -buffer: An Efficient, Memory-Friendly and Dynamic src='/images/tex/348.gif' alt='k'> -buffer Framework

摘要

Depth-sorted fragment determination is fundamental for a host of image-based techniques which simulates complex rendering effects. It is also a challenging task in terms of time and space required when rasterizing scenes with high depth complexity. When low graphics memory requirements are of utmost importance, -buffer can objectively be considered as the most preferred framework which advantageously ensures the correct depth order on a subset of all generated fragments. Although various alternatives have been introduced to partially or completely alleviate the noticeable quality artifacts produced by the initial -buffer algorithm in the expense of memory increase or performance downgrade, appropriate tools to automatically and dynamically compute the value of are still missing. To this end, we introduce -buffer, a fast framework that accurately simulates the behavior of -buffer in a single rendering pass. Two memory-bounded data structures: (i) the and (ii) the are developed on the GPU to c- ncurrently maintain the -foremost fragments per pixel by exploring and . Memory-friendly strategies are further introduced to dynamically (a) lessen the wasteful memory allocation of individual pixels with low depth complexity frequencies, (b) minimize the allocated size of -buffer according to different application goals and hardware limitations via a straightforward depth histogram analysis and (c) manage local GPU cache with a fixed-memory depth-sorting mechanism. Finally, an extensive experimental evaluation is provided demonstrating the advantages of our work over all prior -buffer variants in terms of memory usage, performance cost and image quality.