Efficient Rendering of Earth Surface for Air Traffic Visualization

When rendering large-scale scenes, we do encounter a different set of issues than in scenes usually used in games or cinematography. These need to be addressed at the lower level of used visualization engine. In case of this work, the problem is to render Earth surface for any camera configuration, maximizing visual fidelity while avoiding framerate stutters. We break our large data-set into a hierarchical data structure and then use incremental scene construction algorithm that builds a slice through the data structure, taking into account cost and fidelity of particular elements. The final implementation maintains steady 60 frames per second while visualizing Earth surface from any distance or direction. The devised approach works for intended use cases in the AgentFly simulation system, although it needs more development in the future.